Entire families navigate their smartphones while sharing meals at restaurants. Students text in class. Parents take phone calls at their children's sporting events and plays. It has become common for parishes to place blurbs in their bulletins about silencing cellphones and for lectors to make announcements about it before liturgies, reminding parishioners they're in a place of worship.

Connor Danz's science experiments often lead to inventions that solve real-life problems - but the eight-year-old also wants to have fun. "I like making estimates about what's going to happen to stuff if I mix it with something else," he told The Evangelist. In short, "I want to know if something blows up."

Water has been in short supply in one area of Schoharie County still rebuilding after 2011's Tropical Storms Irene and Lee. Along the Schoharie Creek and its tributaries, an outlying area that's mostly home to the poor and isolated elderly, residents have struggled to bounce back after flooding destroyed homes and businesses.

Memories of everyday life are starting to escape John Trzaskos, 89, a parishioner of St. Stanislaus Church in Amsterdam. But he'll never forget the details of June 6, 1944, the day he and more than 160,000 Allied soldiers invaded Western Europe in World War II.

A year may have passed since Tropical Storms Irene and Lee ravaged parts of the Albany Diocese, but the recovery process continues. The August 2011 storms turned almost a dozen counties in the Diocese into federal disaster areas, compelling parishes, Catholic Charities agencies and communities to provide aid. Some parishes deployed volunteers to muck out houses and rebuild; others set up feeding centers and shelters.

AURIESVILLE, N.Y. (CNS) -- As the sun set on the 73rd annual Tekakwitha Conference at its namesake's birthplace July 21, dozens of pilgrims joined hands and formed a circle, launching a traditional dance symbolic of friendship. It also seemed to represent what many attendees described as a feeling of coming full circle as members of the Catholic family.

IN HER FOOTSTEPS: The Story of Kateri Tekakwitha A Salt and Light Production. As the Oct. 21 date of her canonization draws near, Catholics across North America have been celebrating and planning pilgrimages to witness history in the making — the first Native American saint. Perhaps none are more excited and grateful than the approximately 600,000 Native Americans, representing more than 300 tribes and nations, who belong to the Catholic Church.

Giovanni Rogonia, who turns 23 next month, is about a year away from finishing a prison sentence for committing first-degree robbery when was 19. He's also on his ninth college course at medium-security Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie.

Brother Ken Lucas, OFM Conv., has never been to jail, but he feels a kinship to the incarcerated people he counsels at Albany County Correctional Facility. Brother Ken understands "being away from home, being locked up, being with strangers, being scared, angry [and] lonely, being told what to do, not being fed well [and] being abused."

After two Army tours in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, Marc Smith experienced signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, tinnitus and diabetes. But the heroin addiction he picked up abroad dulled his awareness of those conditions. Mr. Smith had started using drugs "just to get out of myself" after "seeing combat, seeing bodies [and] seeing other people suffer," he said. After being honorably discharged - despite his habit, he'd "stayed out of trouble" and fulfilled his role as a sergeant - to his hometown of Newark, N.J., he lost more than 20 jobs, in addition to his license, his home, his family and his credit.

After weeks of hearing power tools buzz through steel in an Albany backyard last summer, Katie Picchione's neighbors grew slightly irritated. When she moved her science project to the garage, its rotten-egg stench irritated her family, too. Even Katie, a junior at the Academy of the Holy Names in Albany, sometimes questioned her homemade biogas digester: Was she using the right materials? Would her hundreds of hours of manual labor, design work and supply shopping pay off? Was it worth it to heat the digester in the garage, to ventilate the area so methane gas didn't seep into the house and to "feed" her new "pet" every day?

The closing liturgy of the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis was over. Event banners were already stripped from the convention center and young people were beginning to board buses back to the Capital Region around midnight.

It seems that the "bingo bubble" in many areas of the Albany Diocese has burst. The game of chance long subsidized many parishes and schools, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a year in some instances. But today, group after group reports that the fundraiser stopped delivering, forcing them to cross it off their lists of moneymakers.

Edward Biittig Sr. had totaled five brand-new cars in a six-month period in his 20s before finally getting arrested for drunk driving. "I only had two choices left," he said of his life at the time. "I would have been in jail or I would have been dead."

As Madelon Swinton finished third grade at St. Mary's School in Waterford last year, she envied some of her classmates: They had gotten back the stuffed animals they had shipped on mystery journeys earlier in the year as a way to learn about passports. It didn't seem like her stuffed animal, a bear named Golden, was coming home.

James Kenneally can recite important dates, like when he started taking art classes and when he was confirmed in the Catholic Church. He can commit anyone's name and birthday to memory and knows exactly how many minutes it took him to draw or paint each of his more than 100 masterpieces. But if he's asked to explain what his art means to him, he resorts to memorized facts. Those who know him say Mr. Kenneally, a 40-year-old living with autism and epilepsy, expresses his feelings and personality through his art.