Editor’s Note: Matthew Chicoine interviewed Brooke Joiner, co-founder of Catholic Owned® via phone call on October 17th, 2025. Some of the questions/answers have been rearranged, edited, and paraphrased to provide the best reader experience without losing any integrity of the answers given.
From Calcutta to Catholic Commerce
You and Matteo met while serving with the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. How did those experiences among “the poorest of the poor” shape the spiritual foundation and mission of Catholic Owned?
Great question! I went to Calcutta by myself to serve and my husband went there with a group. We had met and were introduced by seminarians. We were married the next year and lived in Italy for the next four years.
We consistently try to say yes when God is calling us to do something. And that started with both of us saying yes to going on the mission trip to Calcutta.
We experienced a similar call from God to leave both of our jobs to start Catholic Owned.
The Call to Radical Trust
You both left successful business careers to go “all in” on Catholic Owned. What did discernment look like in that season, and how did you recognize that this was truly God’s call for your family?
We were working in the yachting/marine industry in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At the time of us thinking about doing something different we had three children. We have done (and are still doing) Mother of Divine Grace Homeschool. Part of the preschool curriculum is to listen to the Glory Stories from Holy Heroes and we had heard the Our Lady of Fatima story so many times. We started doing the First Saturday devotion, and this led to us praying the Rosary daily. This devotion started to create a chasm between our work and who we desired to be. God told my husband that we needed to start this business, so we started working on it on the side. The chasm just grew and it got to the point that we were willing to do whatever we needed to do to go “all-in” with Catholic Owned, which we did a month after our fourth child was born.
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