In an exclusive extract from his forthcoming book chronicling Pope Francis’ battle to reform the Church, the Tablet’s Rome correspondent investigates some of the wealthy Catholics in the United States bitterly opposed to Francis’ papacy

“We have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality,” Pope Francis writes in Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”), the 2013 manifesto of his papacy. “Such an economy kills,” he declares. Many wealthy Catholics, particularly in the United States, who combine their faith with unfettered free-market economics, were immediately rattled. What upset the super-rich was the Pope’s rejection of “trickle-down economics”. This central tenet of the libertarian economic model holds that the more money made by those at the top of the financial tree, the more there is for those further down below. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system,” the Pope wrote in a withering assessment. “Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.”

A few weeks after the release of Evangelii Gaudium, Ken Langone, a billionaire spearheading efforts to refurbish St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, told the city’s archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, that a potential seven-figure donor was seriously concerned about the Pope’s statement. Langone is also a donor to the Republican Party and a supporter of President Donald Trump, a man whose worldview runs counter to that of Pope Francis. Scepticism about this pontificate often goes hand in hand with support for Trumpian politics.