“The Prime Minister was sitting at the front of the church,” said Harper’s press secretary Dmitri Soudas in a telephone interview. “The priest, the archbishop, conducting the service approached the front row and offered communion to the Governor General, her husband and then offered it to the Prime Minister.
“The Prime Minister accepted it and then he consumed it,” Soudas said. “It’s totally absurd for anybody to say he did not consume it.”
The story broke first in a New Brunswick newspaper. Other journalists followed suit, including online versions linking to the YouTube video that demands Harper apologize to Catholics for pocketing the consecrated host.
The YouTube video, professionally reproduced using footage from Canada’s Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC), shows Moncton Archbishop André Richard distributing the host. Harper extends one hand as if he was expecting to shake hands. The video shows the PM receiving communion in his hand but hesitating. The camera moves away.
Soudas explained that Harper was holding his program in his hand, then he put the program down and consumed the host after the camera had moved away.
Soudas also noted that Senator Noel Kinsella, the Senate Speaker, has confirmed that he saw the Prime Minister consume the host.
Asked whether the Prime Minister is aware that it is a scandal for non-Catholics to receive communion, Soudas said: “The Prime Minister is Christian and in this specific case, the archbishop offered it to the Prime Minister and he consumed it.”
Harper might have preferred that his G8 message concerning stimulus spending (he wants to see the money already committed actually spent before new programs are announced) not get sidetracked by what some stories and blogs have described as everything from a scandal to a faux pas.
The timing, so close to his audience with Pope Benedict XVI, adds some extra hype to the story.