Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper accepted and ate a communion wafer at a Catholic mass and didn’t pocket it as critics have alleged, his spokesman said on Wednesday.
Harper, a devout Protestant, attended last week’s state funeral for Canada’s former governor general, Romeo LeBlanc, during which a Catholic priest offered him a communion host.
YOUTUBE
TV images, some of which have been posted on YouTube, showed Harper receiving the host. The camera remained on the prime minister for several seconds but it did not show him actually place the wafer into his mouth.
“At the end of the service, he was offered communion. He accepted communion and he consumed it,” Dimitri Soudas said on Wednesday, quoted by Canadian media.
Soudas spoke in L’Aquila, Italy, where Harper was attending a G8 meeting.
A Catholic official, vicar general Brian Henneberry, raised the controversy by openly wondering what Harper had done with the wafer.
Henneberry, who is chancellor of Saint John in New Brunswick, where the funeral took place, said it would be scandalous had the prime minister put it in his pocket.
The speaker of Canada’s Senate, Noel Kinsella, rushed to Harper’s defense.
“I would like to state that I personally witnessed Prime Minister Harper consume the host that was given to him by Archbishop Andre Richard,” Kinsella said in a statement. “As a Catholic, I was therefore pleased to see the prime minister of Canada express his solidarity and communion with all those present in the sanctuary.”
POPE
After the G8 summit, Harper is due at the weekend to have an audience with Pope Benedict.
According to Catholic tradition, the host is a representation of the body of Jesus Christ, and some critics of Harper’s actions point out that Church law dictates that non-Catholics abstain from receiving communion.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
RSS