As a young man, Peter Rex wanted to glorify God and change the world. The only problem? He was, in his own words, too “unruly” to stick it out in seminary and found that he didn’t like politics.

So Rex went into business — and discovered his path to proclaiming the Gospel in the process.

Free to use his gifts for problem solving and innovation like never before, the upstate New York native found entrepreneurship to be a powerful avenue for serving others in ways that reverenced their dignity and his own.

Now 42 and with several successful ventures under his belt, Rex employs 500-plus people at the Austin, Texas-based, eponymous tech company he founded in 2018, where Catholic principles provide the basis for everything from the small business-assisting products he invests in to how he shapes his company culture.

“I try to take the same missionary zeal that I’d have if I was running a mission out in Africa as a priest and apply it to the business world in which I work,” Rex, who is married with five kids, told the Register. “And I think that through the business world, we help bring the Kingdom [of God] through the products and services we create.”

Rex’s story — as a serious Catholic on the cutting edge of tech innovation — isn’t a common one, but it’s one that could become so going forward. The Catholic Church is in the midst of deepening its engagement with entrepreneurship, developing a theology that sees the work of business founders and executives not merely as an honest way to make a living, but as a response to a calling to co-create with God.

And with innovative business leaders like Elon Musk dominating the contemporary moment, the time has arguably never been more crucial for the Church to develop a robust “theology of entrepreneurship” — and equipping more people to put it into action.

“Entrepreneurs are some of the most impactful people in the world right now,” said John Cannon, the founder of SENT Ventures, a nonprofit that provides formation to Catholic business leaders. “So how does the Church respond to this? Is there a way of using this to advance the Gospel?”

“Helping [business] people lead with faith is more important now than ever,” he added.

Transforming the Temporal Order

Flowing from Vatican II’s emphasis on the universal call to holiness and the laity’s duty to transform the temporal order “through the spirit of the Gospel,” the Catholic Church has recently invested theological firepower into thinking through what entrepreneurism might have to do with God and holiness.

St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI both taught on the subject, emphasizing business leaders’ responsibility to serve the common good and their co-participation in God’s creative activity.

Pope Francis also has encouraged entrepreneurs to embrace their vocation “in the true spirit of lay missionaries,” as he did in a 2015 speech, by offering a witness to the Church’s teaching about human dignity and the nobility of work.

Tying these teachings together, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development, in partnership with the John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), has published The Vocation of the Business Leader, which encourages entrepreneurs to not merely avoid unethical practices, but to embrace their call as stewards of God’s gifts.

“Businesspeople have been given great resources, and the Lord asks them to do great things,” states the 30-page text document, which had a fifth edition published in 2018. “For Christian business leaders, this is a time that calls for the witness of faith, the confidence of hope, and the practice of love.”

Outside of Rome, Catholic intellectuals like Luke Burgis, the entrepreneur-in-residence at The Catholic University of America’s Ciocca Center, are also helping the Church think through how Catholicism and business innovation fit together.

The Church’s explicit focus on entrepreneurship and faith may be a more recent phenomenon, but Cannon says Catholicism has always embraced creative risk-taking for the sake of serving God and others.

In fact, the former investment banker and Carmelite friar contends that the entrepreneurial spirit has been a key factor in Church renewal throughout the centuries, embodied by bold innovators like St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and religious founders such as St. Teresa of Calcutta.

Many of these “entrepreneurs of the Spirit,” as Cannon calls them, were priests and religious, devoted to spiritual apostolates rather than temporal ones.

But he says that many of the principles that guided them — such as seeking God above all, addressing real needs, and understanding the “zeitgeist” of their day — can be practiced by Catholic entrepreneurs today.

“These saints were performing at a high level while still having deep prayer lives and being charitable,” said Cannon. “We can often say those are different things. They don’t have to be.”

Catholic Entrepreneurship in Action

That’s the experience of several contemporary Catholic business leaders, whether the companies they’ve founded are explicitly Catholic or more secular, or are big or small.

Martin Cabrera, for instance, draws deeply from St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits’ emphasis on pursuing excellence and serving others to guide how he runs Cabrera Capital, the largest Latino-owned investment banking firm in the country.

The Chicago businessman notes that doing things right, such as being trustworthy with his clients, is a way of both staying faithful to God and being a good entrepreneur.

“It’s not sacrificing any of those values to be the best,” said Cabrera, 54, who is married with five children. “It’s actually part of what makes you the best.”

That same kind of reliance upon God has been a guiding light for Jacqueline “Jackie” Mulligan, who founded Reform Wellness to offer Christ-centered health services after experiencing healing in her own life. Mulligan continues to rely on daily prayer as the heartbeat of her business venture.

“When we view our work as a means to serve God and use the unique gifts he’s given us, it brings greater fulfilment, motivation, and a sense of meaning to our daily tasks,” Mulligan, 38, told the Register.

For Rob Reynolds, his relationship with Christ is what prompted him to leave behind a successful real estate career in 2018 to start Studio 3:16, which provides Christian media for kids.

(Reynolds is the brother of Peter Rex, who changed his legal name to “Peter Love Rex” to highlight that divine love is the most powerful force in the universe.)

But Reynolds’ Catholic faith is also what shapes the company’s culture. Studio 3:16, which employs between 11 and 30 people, depending on if they’re in production or not, starts every morning with a 15-minute “daily huddle,” which includes an offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a litany, and a review of the company’s virtues.

“We close out with ‘St. Joseph, pray for us,’ ‘God is good all the time,’ the Sign of the Cross and then we’re on to the day,” said Reynolds, 43, who lives in Tampa Bay, Florida, with his wife and eight children.

At Rex, Reynolds’ brother tries to do something similar, albeit with mostly non-religious employees, inviting them into an endeavor that he believes is decidedly Catholic, even if it isn’t selling religious products.

Rex’s company mission is “catalyze human flourishing,” and one of its company values is “love” — love the people you serve, the people you work with, and what you do. Employees start every day by reflecting on how this mission is personally important to them.

“Many of my employees would never go to church,” shared Rex. “So they would never hear these things. And man, they take to them like crazy. That gets me pumped up.”

Filling the Hole

While some encouraging steps have been taken in the Church’s engagement with entrepreneurship, Rex still believes there is a “big hole” that needs to be filled. As an example, he points out that, as a young man, he never considered entrepreneurship because it “wasn’t really presented” as a viable option for an “intense Catholic.”

A step in the right direction, he says, might be canonizing more Catholic entrepreneurs. One possibility to keep an eye on is Enrique Ernesto Shaw, a 20th-century Argentinian businessman who Pope Francis declared “Venerable” in 2021.

Apostolates like SENT Ventures are also doing their part. Founded in 2020, the organization helps Catholic entrepreneurs connect their faith to their business through ongoing formation, an annual conference and a robust mentorship program.

“We’ve found that people are actually hungry for this,” said Cannon. “It’s tapped into a need that’s even bigger than I thought it was.”

Rex emphasizes that the lay faithful are members of the Body of Christ and should take an active approach in applying the Church’s teaching to the business world.

“We are the people of the Resurrection. We are the people of creation. We’re the people of the eighth day,” he said. “So we should be creating things, doing stuff, building and pushing it, not being like ‘Well, if you’re not a priest, then you’re not doing anything impactful.’ That’s not actually what we think, because we think about the new heavens and the new earth, and we are making all things new.”

Spoken like a true Catholic entrepreneur.