Did he think he was getting a pocketful of miracles?

You have to see this to believe it. Canada’s Prime Minister (who is not Catholic) receives communion. And then decides to hold onto it for…safekeeping? A souvenir? Good luck?

H/T American Papist.

UPDATE: Despite what you see on the video, the Prime Minister’s office yesterday said that he did in fact, consume the host:

The Prime Minister’s Office moved swiftly Wednesday to refute allegations that Stephen Harper pocketed a sacramental communion wafer at the funeral mass of Romeo LeBlanc instead of consuming it.

“It’s totally absurd,” the prime minister’s press secretary, Dimitri Soudas, said. “The priest offered the host to the prime minister, the prime minister accepted the host and he consumed it.”

Monsignor Brian Henneberry, vicar general and chancellor in the Diocese of Saint John, says a parishioner approached him in the days following the funeral and “expressed concern” that the prime minister accepted the host during the funeral mass, but then slipped it into his pocket instead of eating it.

The Catholic religion dictates that the communion bread, once consecrated by the priest, becomes the body and blood of Christ and must be consumed once accepted.

“So we treat them with great respect and so we have very strict rules,” Henneberry said. “If they said he consumed it, then that’s all right.”

A YouTube video of the event shows Harper accepting the host from the priest and holding it in his hand. It does not show what happened to the host after he accepted it.

The Speaker of the Senate, Noel Kinsella, however, came to the prime minister’s defence Wednesday and provided his own eye witness account.

“I would like to state that I personally witnessed Prime Minister Harper consume the host that was given to him by Archbishop Andre Richard. Sitting only a few seats behind him, I had a full view of the proceedings and clearly saw the prime minister accept the host after Archbishop Richard offered it. The prime minister consumed it,” Kinsella said in a statement.

Kinsella said that as a Catholic, he was “pleased”to see Harper “express his solidarity” and accept communion during the funeral mass.