and the soaring gables of a giant oratory. Squint and you may see nuns tending the immaculate flower borders.

Welcome to Ave Maria, a city that has not yet been born but which is well on the way.

Ground for roads and other infrastructure was broken last month and, if all goes to plan, the first of its 11,000 new homes will be ready for residents late next year. So too will be a new university, which hopes to become home to 5,000 undergraduates.

Ave Maria is being built, on the edge of the Everglades National Park, by a man called Tom Monaghan. Two things are worth knowing about him:

he made a fortune building the Domino's Pizza chain and, since reading CS Lewis in 1989, he has been a strict Catholic on an evangelical mission.

Monaghan has been giving to Catholic causes for two decades. And after selling his controlling interest in Domino's in 1999 for a reported $1bn ( 830m), he has recently been in a position to step up these charitable activities, attracting controversy along the way. His money has flowed into Catholic organisations, in particular those that oppose birth control and legal abortion. In the early 1990s, pro-choice groups tried, though largely failed, to orchestrate a boycott of Domino's.

Some see something dangerous in a man who went from living the life of a dollarspoiled tycoon . . . with yachts, mansions, a Bugatti and even a big-league baseball team . . . to avid lieutenant of the Vatican.

Never, however, has he caused quite so much consternation than today with his plans for Ave Maria. Word leaked out last week that Monaghan was building a town where only Catholics would be welcome and where the "polluting" influences of the carnal world would be censored. Media reports said he planned to control all commerce in the town, keeping anything X-rated off the television, banning smut from the newsstands and even forbidding shops from selling contraceptives.

Though the man they call the 'Pizza Pope' has been sparing in his public pronouncements, when he has spoken he has done little to reassure his critics. Talking to Newsweek about Ave Maria, he said: "I believe all of history is just one big battle between good and evil. I don't want to be on the sidelines." He has also described his decision to bankroll the new town with 200m of his own money as carrying out "God's will".

Then there was a speech to students last year by Nicholas Healey, the man chosen by Monaghan to be president of Ave Maria University. He talked of the dangers of fundamentalist Islam, of the "catastrophic cultural collapse" of the Christian West, especially in Europe, and his quest that his future students will understand that they have a duty to "help rebuild the city of God".

Monaghan had hoped to build the town on Domino's Farms, the headquarters of his pizza giant outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, but local authorities denied him planning permission. The Sunshine State had no such qualms. This is the state that allowed Walt Disney to create his own universe after World War II with Disney World, and didn't blink when Disney later built a town of its own called Celebration.

So, when Monaghan bought the 5,000 acres that will shortly become Ave Maria, among those applauding him was Florida governor Jeb Bush.

He attended a ground-breaking ceremony last month and praised the vision of Ave Maria as a place "where faith and freedom will merge".

Shortly to turn 69, Monaghan was born in Ann Arbor in 1947 and raised by his single mother and by nuns at a convent school. After serving in the Marines and receiving an honourable discharge in 1959, he studied at the University of Michigan. He and his brother bought a hole-in-the-wall pizza shop in Ypsilanti, Michigan, called DomiNick's Pizza.

The brother later turned over his share in the company in return for a VW Beetle, leaving Tom to build an empire with over 6,000 outlets worldwide.

Even in those days, he was displaying signs of his religious calling. With his anti-abortion convictions strengthening, he took to naming his birth date nine months earlier than his actual birthday. In 1983, he created the Mater Christi Foundation to funnel his wealth to Christian causes. In 1987, he received the blessing of Pope John Paul II and formed Legatus, a club of American corporate leaders interested in promoting Catholic teaching.

But it was when a friend gave him a copy of Mere Christianity in 1989 that Monaghan's priorities changed in earnest.

He took a break from Domino's, and from then on defending the tenets of Catholicism became his main endeavour.

The plans for Ave Maria have been swamped by questioning media articles and threats of law suits from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"If he wants to build a town and encourage like-minded people to come and live there, that's fine, " said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU in Florida, who predicted the law suits could be multiple. "We get into problems where he tries to exercise governmental authority."

Such has been the brouhaha that Florida's attorney general has had to step in. "The community has the right to provide a wholesome environment, " said Charlie Crist. "If someone disagrees, they have the right to go to court and present facts before a judge."

Yesterday, Monaghan and his partners on the project were on television shows claiming a misunderstanding.

True, Monaghan said, he would exercise authority over the university to keep out pornography and condoms.

But the town would be like anywhere else in the US, open to whatever flows in. "There's a lot of misconceptions about this. I don't really have a vision for the town. I have a vision for the university, " he said.

A slightly more nuanced message was rehearsed by Paul Marinelli of Barron Collier, the company that is building the town. There would indeed be no topless bars or adult bookshops. He admitted he hoped there would be no contraceptives in its shops, but said there would be no ban on them. "We're not trying to create a city with walls around it that isolates from the world, " he said. "It is not going to be a Catholic town. We do not discriminate against anyone."

It will be another year or more before Ave Maria is declared open and only then will these assurances be tested. And they almost certainly will.