As a schoolboy, Emmanuel Macron decided he wanted to be baptised as a Catholic, despite his parents’ misgivings. It was “the start of a mystical period that lasted for a few years,” the French President told an interviewer during campaigning in 2017.
By his mid-teens, he had distanced himself from the church, however, and he now considers himself to be agnostic. Asked last year whether he believed in God, he gave a cryptic answer that pointed to his faith in something spiritual and immaterial, but not Catholic in form. “I believe in a form of transcendence, that’s why I thoroughly respect the role of religions in society,” he said during a chat with journalists.