A devotee burns incense after dressing a statue of the Lord of Great Power inside a Catholic church of the same name, in preparation for the upcoming annual festival, in La Paz, Bolivia, on Thursday. The Associated Press

Nation

New Jersey

Christian group allows access to beach

OCEAN GROVE — A Christian religious group that has closed its beaches on Sunday mornings for generations to honor God is relenting temporarily, allowing beachgoers onto the sand while it fights a court case with New Jersey over whose rules are paramount.

The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a Methodist group that established a Christian seaside retreat at the Jersey Shore in 1869, says it will allow people onto the beach on Sunday mornings while the case plays out.

The association has asked for an emergency ruling halting action by the Department of Environmental Protection to enforce beach access laws that New Jersey says Ocean Grove is violating. The agency threatened fines of $25,000 per day.

California

Landslide forces closure of chapel

RANCHO PALOS VERDES — A decades-old landslide that’s rapidly accelerating has forced the dismantling of Wayfarers Chapel, an iconic Southern California church that was designed by one of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s sons and built among soaring redwoods and sweeping Pacific Ocean views.

The earth beneath the chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes is moving an unprecedented 2 feet or more each month. Intended to celebrate the natural world, the chapel is instead being destroyed by it.

“It’s actually dangerous to even walk on the grounds now because everything is breaking,” the Rev. Dan Burchett, the chapel’s executive director, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Nature, in one sense, is showing her power.”

World

Italy

Florence dome architect’s bust found

A previously unknown terracotta bust of the famed early Renaissance architect who designed the Florence Cathedral dome was unveiled Thursday in the Tuscan capital, where it will be displayed permanently following restoration.

The Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, the entity charged with preserving the landmark cathedral and operating its museum, called the discovery after nearly 700 years of the terracotta bust depicting Filippo Brunelleschi “exceptional.” It cited both the artistic value as well as the rarity of depictions of the renowned architect around or after the time of his death in 1446.

Art historians Giancarlo Gentilini and Alfredo Bellandi identified the sculpture as a model by Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti for the marble bust of Brunelleschi in the memorial monument in the Florence Cathedral.

Vatican makes fresh overture to China

ROME — The Vatican made another big overture to China on Tuesday, reaffirming the Catholic Church poses no threat to Beijing’s sovereignty and admitting that Western missionaries had made “errors” in past centuries in their zeal to convert the Chinese faithful.

The Vatican hosted the head of China’s bishops conference for an unprecedented, high-level commemoration of a landmark 1924 meeting in Shanghai that affirmed the need for foreign missionaries in China to give way to local church leaders.

The presence of Shanghai Bishop Joseph Shen Bin alongside the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, at the Pontifical Urbaniana University was in itself noteworthy. It marked the first time in memory that a mainland bishop has been allowed by Beijing to participate in a public Vatican event as the keynote speaker.