Around the Nation

A Philadelphia artist has been commissioned to welcome the pope with a public art display. She's reinterpreting one of the pope's favorite pieces of art: a baroque painting of the Virgin Mary.

Pope Francis is set to visit a Catholic school in New York City that used to have a sponsoring church. The parish was closed in 2007 in a region that has been a traditional Catholic stronghold.

The pope will canonize 18th-century Spanish priest Junipero Serra in the U.S. later this month. But descendants of the Mission Indians in California say Serra destroyed their traditional way of life.

About 40 percent of U.S. Catholics are foreign-born or the children of immigrants. The change is having profound effects, from reviving dying parishes to shifting the church's geographical center.

Most jobs added since the recession are going to workers either in the top third or the bottom third of income. Those in the middle are getting squeezed out — especially men.

The increasing popularity of the trail is raising concerns at Baxter State Park in Maine, where thru-hikers often complete their arduous journeys with a celebratory climb up Mount Katahdin.

Villanova University students are integral to Pope Francis' U.S. social media team via the college's Vatican internship program. They were part of the launch of the papal Twitter account and the Vatican's ongoing social media efforts.

Commuters often tell Lamour Rogers that they were having a bad day until they heard his voice. He says it's in his soul to make people happy.

The land that became New York City's Central Park was once home to Manhattan's first-known community of African-American property owners. A new play explores how eminent domain forced them out.