A KELTY picture framer is “delighted” to have been chosen to make a frame for Pope Francis.

Peter Dodds, owner of The Art Centre, was recently approached by the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Dunfermline’s Right Reverend John Chalmers, to make a frame for a very special item being taken to the Vatican as part of an historic visit.

The item to be framed was a glass dove of peace made from fragments of broken bottles and shattered glass from the Israeli invasion of Bethlehem. The glass was picked from the rubble and assembled by the poorest of the poor at Bethlehem’s international centre. Peter talked to the Times about the special project and said, “We’ve known the Reverend Chalmers for a number of years. He’s been a customer in the past and we’ve done a lot of work for the Church of Scotland. We like to think it’s the past experiences of our standard of work that led to us being chosen.

“It was a quick turnaround and an unusual, 3-D item that needed a specialist frame made for it. We had a discussion with Reverend Chalmers about how he wanted it to look and worked around his ideas. We wanted to make sure it was perfect and we turned it around in a week”.

He added, “We did something similar that was presented to the Dalai Lama when he visited Dunfermline. We were asked to frame a picture of the town for him. We saw the dove on TV on Monday (16th) being handled by the Pope, this iconic world figure. It was a great feeling of pride seeing something you’ve made being handled by the Pope.” Reverend Chalmers’ meeting in the Vatican last Monday is believed to be only the third such event in history between a Church of Scotland Moderator and the Pope and this was the most significant for a very long time. Reflecting on the importance of the commission, Peter (left) said, “We are more than used to handling irreplaceable items so we are always mindful. There was a pressure to deliver in time and my colleague Staig MacCallum and I both worked on it and were very happy.

“We put it on Facebook and got quite a good response, it’s been good publicity. Even though I tagged the Pope in the post there has been no feedback as yet!”