Tuesday, 7 April 2026

POPE FRANCIS   ...  an assessment of his papacy



Now that it is almost a year since Pope Francis went to his eternal reward perhaps it is an appropriate time to offer an assessment of his papacy.

Overall he was quite a good pope. He did not have the intellect of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI but he made up for that with his pastoral zeal. I loved that his first trip abroad was to the island of Lampedusa.

Did he make mistakes? Of course he did. His worst mistake? Undoubtedly this happened in his first year as Pope when he was asked by journalists about gays in the Church. His response was: "Who am I to judge?" Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. As Pope he was indeed the very man to judge.

Gene

 

Lost Joan Eardley painting found in charity shop sells for £29,500

Black-and-white photograph of a woman standing outdoors beside an easel, wearing a paint-splattered smock and looking at the camera with a slight smile.
A wooden shed and foliage sit behind her, with wind-tousled hair suggesting an exposed, coastal setting.Image source,The estate of Audrey Walker courtesy of The Scottish Gallery
Image caption,

Joan Eardley is known for her depictions of Glasgow's street children and the coastal landscapes of Catterline

ByBy Benjamin Russell
  • Published

A "long lost" painting by Joan Eardley - known for her depictions of Glasgow street children and an Aberdeenshire fishing village - has sold for £29,500 after being discovered in a charity shop.

Staff at the shop in the East Midlands were curious about the artwork when they found a faded label on the back which linked it to The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh.

The gallery was able to confirm it as Summer Fields by Eardley, and it has now been sold it to a private collector of Scottish art.

The shop which found it wished to remain nameless, but gallery director Tommy Zyw said it was the largest single sale in the charity's history and would help it support medical research.

Eardley, who was born in England in 1921 and moved to Scotland as a teenager, is known for her depictions of Glasgow's street children and the coastal landscapes of Catterline, an Aberdeenshire fishing village.

She died at the age of 42 in 1963.

Zyw described Eardley as "a star who continues to rise as her audience grows and more and more people engage with her subject and her life and work".

Summer Fields was painted around 1961 and captures the "dying sunset spilling across the corner of a Catterline field".

Muted, atmospheric landscape painting with a hazy grey sky and a glowing red-yellow sun near the top. Loose, expressive brushstrokes suggest a low horizon with rough grasses or scrub in the foreground and distant land fading into mist.Image source,The estate of Joan Eardley courtesy of The Scottish Gallery
Image caption,

Summer Fields was painted a few years before Eardley's death in 1963

Zyw told how the gallery is often contacted by owners of paintings to do valuations.

He said most of the time they turn out to be framed posters or works by "family members, but occasionally they get something "very, very special".

"This is just what happened with this remarkable painting which was sent to us from a charity shop in the East Midlands," he said.

He explained that the manager of the shop had been going through items from a house clearance when he spotted "a small dark oil painting".

He said on the reverse of it there was a fragment of a label, on which there were only a few legible words.

"One was 'summer ', one was 'Joan' and one was 'The Scottish Gallery' and as soon as we picked up the phone our interest was piqued - could this be a long lost Joan Eardley painting?"

Zyw said the painting was then kept at a shop worker's house until it could be collected and brought to the gallery by an art carrier.

Portrait of a man in a white shirt, smiling slightly while standing in front of a vivid, colourful painting with theatrical figures and bold red and gold tones.Image source,The Scottish Gallery
Image caption,

Director of The Scottish Gallery Tommy Zyw said he knew the painting was by Eardley as soon as he saw it

"My pulse was quickening as I was unwrapping the bubble," he said.

"As soon as the bubble wrap was lifted from the painting's surface I knew exactly what it was - it just had to be a Joan Eardley painting."

"The same way you are familiar with your family members or best friend's handwriting - the handling of the paint, the way it was presented all spoke instantly of the great master Joan Eardley."

He said he was also able to use information on the label to confirm its provenance.

"I was able, given those small fragments of information, to look up its original sale in our historic daybooks and I could find that the sale written in scrolling script in these old ledgers was the sale of Summer Fields in May 1961.

"And so that was the final seal of approval to authenticate this painting and to start its journey back to public display."

Close-up of a worn, torn label attached to the back of a canvas, with faded textImage source,The Scottish Gallery
Image caption,

The worn label on the back of the painting helped the charity shop trace it to The Scottish Gallery

The painting was then cleaned before being exhibited at the British Art Fair in London in September 2025 and then at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh's New Town in October.

Zyw said: "It was visited by many, many thousands of people - including the original manager of the charity shop who came and enjoyed seeing the painting in a completely different context from when it first arrived with him."

Zyw said Summer Fields then caught the eye of a collector and the charity was "over the moon" with the sale.

"It was something they were all extremely excited about, from the shop manager who first found it, to higher up in head office, they've all followed this journey with great excitement," he said.

"We are in touch with lots of art connoisseurs, art lovers and people looking for that one special painting to add to their art collection, and the painting is now with a great lover of Scottish art, particularly post-war art, and so it is now happily hanging in somebody else's home for the next chapter in this painting's story to unfold."

 

‘Vile on every level’: Tucker Carlson rips Donald Trump over Easter Sunday ‘f-word’ post

The former Fox News host also slammed the U.S. president for “mocking” Islam during a scathing critique.

FILE - Tucker Carlson attends a meeting with President Donald Trump and oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - Tucker Carlson attends a meeting with President Donald Trump and oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) | AP

By Ali Walker

Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson tore into Donald Trump on Monday night, calling an Easter Sunday social media post from the U.S. president “vile on every level” and accusing him of threatening to commit a war crime.

“How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country?” Carlson said in a monologue on his podcast. “Who do you think you are? You’re tweeting out the f-word on Easter morning.”

On Sunday, a major Christian holiday, Trump posted a profane message on Truth Social, threatening Iran’s civilian infrastructure.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” the president wrote on his social media platform.

Carlson’s scathing monologue underscores a widening split inside Trump’s MAGA coalition, pitting foreign policy hawks against isolationists over the Middle East.

Trump returned to power on a promise to put “America first” and pledged an end to endless foreign wars, but his attack on Iran — now into its sixth week — has unsettled some of his previous supporters.

Trump’s post “begins with a promise to use the U.S. military — our military — to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country, which is to say, to commit a war crime, a moral crime, against the people of the country whose welfare, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place,” Carlson said.

The conservative pundit, a former Fox News host and occasional visitor to the White House who has ramped up his criticism of Trump in recent weeks, also slammed the president for his mention of “Allah.”

“So obviously you’re mocking the religion of Iran,” he said. “OK, if you seek a religious war, that’s a good idea. But by the way, no decent person mocks other people’s religions. You may have a problem with the theology — presumably you do if it’s not your religion — and you can explain what that is. But to mock other people’s faith is to mock the idea of faith itself.”

Carlson wasn’t alone among arch-conservatives in rebuking Trump over the Easter missive.

“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness,” ex-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Trump acolyte, said Sunday.

“This is not making America great again, this is evil,” she added.