Why is France’s new PM head-butting colleagues? A teenage interest in monks is part of the answer

PARIS (AP) — As they get to know their new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, a loyal ally of President Emmanuel Macron who had been remarkably low-key before taking one of the top jobs in the land, the French are also discovering that he has a somewhat unusual habit: He likes to butt heads.

Instead of the greeting that many French use to say hello — two, and in some places even three or four, kisses on the cheeks — the 39-year-old former defense minister has been repeatedly spotted in his first days in office giving gentle head-butts to male colleagues.

Although not new, it’s got French media talking — and digging into the prime minister’s past before politics, when he toyed as a teenager with the idea of becoming a monk.

Le Monde and other French publications say Lecornu’s way of greeting people — mostly men, but sometimes women, too — with soft temple-to-temple bumps stems from time he spent at Saint-Wandrille Abbey, a community of about 30 Benedictine monks in the Normandy region northwest of Paris.

The naturally discreet Lecornu, citing reasons both personal and professional, has said he finds it difficult to talk publicly about what attracted him to the possibility of joining them.

“I don’t like to talk about it, but it’s true,” he said, drawing a deep breath, when asked in 2024 on France’s Television’s “Quelle époque !” chat show whether it was accurate that he had considered becoming a Benedictine monk.

The host, Léa Salamé, quickly followed up.

“What moved you above all is the manner the monks have of greeting each other, forehead to forehead,” she said.

“Oh, not just that,” replied the then-defense minister.

“I had a moment in my adolescent life, a period of discernment, as we say, but which is a very intimate period. I don’t really like talking about that because, for one, I represent the state as a minister and the state is neutral. And so I am a great defender of secularism.”

He then added: “Since you asked me the question: Yes, when I was 16.”

The Benedictines are a spiritual family of mostly contemplative monks that is considered the oldest religious order in the Latin rite Catholic Church. It dates to 529 AD and follows the Rule governing monastic life attributed to St. Benedict of Norcia.

Catholic priests do variations of the temple-to-temple greeting when exchanging the sign of peace at Mass. Often, they grab one another’s forearms and lean in, side to side in a modified kiss-kiss greeting that avoids touching and almost resembles a fashionista air kiss.

When Lecornu took office on Wednesday, greeting government colleagues at a handover of power at Matignon, the office of France’s premiers, he gave traditional two-cheeked “bises” kisses to female colleagues, including Catherine Vautrin, the labor minister in the outgoing government, and Rachida Dati, who served as culture minister.

But male colleagues, including outgoing Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, got temple-to-temple bumps from the new government boss who has yet to name his new Cabinet.

Lecornu also gave a temple-to-temple greeting to senior presidential aide Patrice Faure at a meeting that evening.

Jean-Louis Langlois, a civilian volunteer at the more than 1,300-year-old Saint-Wandrille Abbey, told The Associated Press on Friday that the temple-to-temple contact is called an accolade.

“Tilting your head to the right, and the temple touches that of the other, on the side of the face, at the moment when we exchange a sign of peace,” said Langlois, who hasn’t met Lecornu.

“It is a very beautiful gesture,” he said.

Rev. Philippe Nouzille, a French Benedictine monk in Rome, said: “I knew nothing about this part of our new Prime Minister’s past.”

The greeting “is common in monasteries, at least in France,” Nouzille said. “We do it when we welcome a monk from another monastery, or a monk from the same monastery who has been away for a long time, or when it’s someone’s feast day, or during the sign of peace at Mass.”

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Associated Press Vatican correspondent Nicole Winfield in Rome and Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris contributed.