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The designs reveal a building one could see in a big city, where visitors would pay admission to see what’s inside. But this 100-foot tall oratory, which will be the center of Ave Maria University and its town, will sit right here, in Collier County, where bulldozers now trample over old tomato fields.

It will look like a museum, but will cater to Roman Catholics. It will fit 1,100 people who will have the option of attending as many as 20 Masses a week; some will be in Latin, most in English. Next to the oratory will be a 65-foot crucifix, which Tom Monaghan touts as being the largest in the world. The crucifix will sit on a plaza with a bell tower and fountains, where crowds will gather to hear priests minister on holy days from the oratory’s balcony, just as Pope Benedict XVI does in Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Square.

Visitors inside will be able to look up and see beams streaming across one another like clouds of confetti, with the sun shining through the skylight.

"Here we have Mary and Joseph and the 12 apostles," Monaghan says, pointing to pictures of statues that will sit behind the altar. "We realize we’re probably going to have a lot of Catholics in this town. (The oratory) will have a spiritual feeling to it."

Monaghan, chancellor and creator of AMU, revealed plans for the oratory today, along with AMU President Nick Healy and AMU Provost the Rev. Joseph Fessio. Officials from Barron Collier Cos., which is helping Monaghan build the university and town, stood in suits behind cameras in the front of the room. Monaghan sat at the end of a table in a room decorated with pictures of the future school and town, which Monaghan expects will attract mostly practicing Catholics, though he says residents won’t have to be Catholic to live there.

The design will be part of the first phase of the Ave Maria project, which will be built in eastern Collier County on 5,000 acres off of Oil Well Road. Crews are now clearing the ground and construction is expected to start in the spring. Sections of the first phase are expected to open in 2007. The interim campus now sits in the Vineyards and serves 300 students. The new campus will serve 6,000.