diff -urNp -x '*.orig' mod_python-3.5.0.org/src/mod_python.c mod_python-3.5.0/src/mod_python.c
--- mod_python-3.5.0.org/src/mod_python.c	2013-11-12 04:21:34.000000000 +0100
+++ mod_python-3.5.0/src/mod_python.c	2021-03-02 22:05:35.833364242 +0100
@@ -772,8 +772,15 @@ static int python_init(apr_pool_t *p, ap
     {
         initialized = 1;
 
-        /* initialze the interpreter */
+        /* Initialze the main interpreter. We do not want site.py to
+         * be imported because as of Python 2.7.9 it would cause a
+         * circular dependency related to _locale which breaks
+         * graceful restart so we set Py_NoSiteFlag to 1 just for this
+         * one time. (https://github.com/grisha/mod_python/issues/46)
+         */
+        Py_NoSiteFlag = 1;
         Py_Initialize();
+        Py_NoSiteFlag = 0;
 
 #ifdef WITH_THREAD
         /* create and acquire the interpreter lock */
@@ -2646,7 +2653,7 @@ static void PythonChildInitHandler(apr_p
      * problems as well. Thus disable cleanup of Python when
      * child processes are being shutdown. (MODPYTHON-109)
      *
-    apr_pool_cleanup_register(p, NULL, python_finalize, apr_pool_cleanup_null);
+     * apr_pool_cleanup_register(p, NULL, python_finalize, apr_pool_cleanup_null);
      */
 
     /*