Did Harper swallow the Host?

They still don’t have a good explanation as to why Harper, an Evangelical Protestant, would want Holy Communion and what he did with the host that he took from the priest.

Did he put it into his mouth and swallow it, or did he slip it into his coat pocket as the New Brunswick Catholic clergy seems to believe?

The videos and television cameras show Harper accepting the host in his right hand from Msgr. André Richard, but we don’t see what happened after that. Harper is out of camera angle.

His aides insist he swallowed the host. But they can’t say when.

Nor do they explain why Harper, as a Protestant, would want to be taking part in one of the most sacred of Catholic religious rites.

Roman Catholics believe that the host, once consecrated by the priest, becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

It is not something you trifle with. As one priest said later: "You don’t go shoving Christ into your coat pocket."

Rev. Donald Berry, a priest at Quispamsis Cathedral said what Harper did is "a sacrilege." "It’s scandalous," added Father Yvon Leblanc, parish priest at Bouctouche.

The Catholic clergy in New Brunswick, several of whom were on the altar watching at the time, waited in vain all week for an apology from Harper.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, issued a statement from Italy, where Harper has been attending a meeting of the G-8 nations. Soudas said Harper had "consumed" the host, but he did not say when. Nor did he explain why he took the host.

Harper could have ended the controversy at any time in the past week by simply saying: "Hey, I was in church and without thinking, I did like everybody else around me. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again." That would have ended it right there.

But saying he is sorry is not Harper’s style. Blaming it on an old priest passing out communion is more like it.

Harper has one defender. Conservative Senator Noel Kinsella, a devout Catholic, says he saw Harper swallowing the host.

It can be said in Harper’s defence that in certain Protestant churches they wait until communion has been passed out to everyone who wants to receive it, and then together as a group, they all put the wafer into their mouths at the same time.

Perhaps Harper was thinking he was back in his own church, the East Gate Alliance Church in Ottawa.

By pure coincidence Harper met His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI a few days later -- a perfect occasion for the prime minister to make a full confession. Details of their conversation were not made public but we can well imagine what the Pope might have said: "So Steve, you’re wanting to become a Catholic, are you?"