His success as a guru among the educated and inquisitive—a group that includes a great many attractive and capable people—is surprising in that it coincides with secularism; he follows a worldview rooted in existentialism and a spirit of liberty, utilitarianism and joie de vivre, seeking to ground all this in an encounter between East and West that today sounds strange and even sinister.

For years, he embodied the most high-profile face of progressive Catholicism. His story – from his success at Bose to his break with Pope Francis – illustrates both the appeal and the limitations of that era