Paris (AFP)

Georges Serignac, elected Saturday at the head of the Grand Orient de France (GODF), pleads in an interview with AFP for an "opening on the outside" of the main Masonic obedience of France, in a pivotal moment of health crisis and development of a "world after".

"We are not secret, we are discreet".

This veterinarian, a 67-year-old Parisian, will be for the duration of his one-year mandate one of the "only visible figures" of this organization, which arouses many fantasies and whose members are not supposed to reveal their membership.

"We are not a political party, nor a union, even less a Church, we are mobilizing with our own means, mainly intellectuals", adds the new "Grand Master".

Its priority: "to resume work", or rather "work", these societal and philosophical discussions at the heart, as well as the rituals, of the bimonthly meetings of Freemasons, which were greatly disturbed by the health crisis.

"The physical contact is absolutely essential in masonry, it is what allows in a mysterious way, even for us, to build a collective thought in which mixes the initiatory and intellectual dimension, which we call + speculative +", explains- t he from his new office at the headquarters of the GODF, rue Cadet in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, a huge complex of six floors which includes around forty "temples".

"Our Masonic + outfits + (meetings) cannot be done otherwise, we cannot replace them by the dematerialized, for us it is impossible because of the rituals", he adds, while saying "accept" the need for sanitary restrictions.

This unprecedented "dotted" year ended for the GODF with the publication, at the initiative of the previous Grand Master Jean-Philippe Hubsch, of a white paper entitled "After".

This rare public synthesis of the work of nearly 1,500 lodges of the obedience, which claims some 52,800 members across France, offers avenues for reflection on society after the health crisis.

And it scratches, in certain passages, the government.

- "The spirit of 1905" -

"What we previously denounced on the management of health systems now takes on a whole new dimension and we will fight to improve that", prefers to temper the new boss of GODF, on the edge between an attachment to the "critical spirit" of its own to the organization and its "legitimist" specificity, therefore which remains neutral on the "legitimacy of the actions of any government".

"Solidarity must occupy a more important place in public speech and in laws", in particular "via the establishment of the universal minimum income, which the Grand Orient has been pushing for decades," adds Mr. Serignac.

In terms of secularism, one of the central themes of liberal Freemasonry in France, the Grand Master wishes, following a first GODF hearing on the separatism bill in the National Assembly, to be more "listened to by the political powers, who contrary to what one believes, listen to us relatively little".

"We defend a middle position on secularism, that of the spirit of 1905 which guarantees and organizes freedom of worship, but against the opponents of this secularism, we recognize it, we are die-hards because without secularism, it is no longer the way of life that we know, it is the end of equality and freedom, "he insists.

While voices are multiplying, especially in this white paper, so that Freemasons commit themselves "finally concretely by carrying out actions for the establishment of a more just society", Georges Serignac is also pushing for a more opened.

"We are in the continuity of a certain tradition but we must be open to the outside, not to consider ourselves as a citadel to which only some could access, on the contrary".

Its desire for openness is also reinforced by this period conducive to the outbreak of conspiracy theories, of which the "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy is a great must".

"We are very vigilant," he said, without however noting a significant increase in "anti-Masonic" acts and remarks in France.

© 2021 AFP