Photos of the Week

This week’s gallery includes celebrations of the Assumption of Mary, preparations for Eid al-Adha and more.

Ethnic Chinese burns joss sticks and candles during the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival in Puchong, Malaysia, on Aug. 16, 2018. The Hungry Ghost Festival is celebrated during the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar, when prayers are offered to the dead and offerings of food and paper-mache models of earthly items such as televisions, refrigerators and sport cars are burned to appease the wandering spirits. It is believed that the gates of hell are opened during the month and the dead ancestors return to visit their relatives.(AP Photo/Yam G-Jun)

(RNS) — Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s gallery includes celebrations of the Assumption of Mary, preparations for Eid al-Adha and more.

Ethnic Chinese burn joss sticks and candles during the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival in Puchong, Malaysia, on Aug. 16, 2018. The Hungry Ghost Festival is celebrated during the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar. Prayers are offered to the dead. Offerings of food and papier-mâché models of earthly items, such as televisions, refrigerators and sport cars, are burned to appease the wandering spirits. It is believed that the gates of hell are opened during the month and the dead ancestors return to visit their relatives. (AP Photo/Yam G-Jun)


Muslim pilgrims pray around the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque, ahead of the annual Hajj pilgrimage in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Aug. 16, 2018. The annual Islamic pilgrimage draws millions of visitors each year, making it the largest annual gathering of people in the world. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

Anarita Mihilli kisses a gold plated cross, while being held by her mother, in the church of the Black Madonna during the feast of the Assumption in the village of Letnica, Kosovo, on Aug. 15, 2018. Thousands of pilgrims gathered in southeastern Kosovo in the small Roman Catholic community where Mother Teresa is believed to have heard her calling to become a nun. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Hindus gather at a graveyard during the Diwaso festival in Ahmadabad, India, on Aug. 11, 2018. Members of the Devipujak community decorate graves, mourn and offer gifts to deceased relatives during the annual festival. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

Girls in traditional costumes take part in a celebration of Mary’s Assumption in Kochel, southern Germany, on Aug. 15, 2018. (Matthias Balk/dpa via AP)

A vendor in Karachi, Pakistan uses a crane to bring a bull down from the rooftop of his three-story house so he can sell him at a livestock market for the upcoming Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, one of Islam’s most important holidays, marks the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham to Christians and Jews) to sacrifice his son. The holiday’s celebration in Pakistan begins Tuesday, Aug. 21. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

Marking the anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. on Aug. 12, 2018, a couple embraces as they participate in prayers at the intersection where Heather Heyer was killed one year earlier. On that day, white supremacists and counterprotesters clashed in the city streets before a car driven into a crowd struck and killed Heyer. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Men carry the body of a suicide bombing victim in a procession to a burial area on Aug. 16, 2018. The victim died the day before in a suicide bombing that targeted a Shiite neighborhood of Dasht-i Barcha, in western Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghan authorities said the bombing killed 34. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)


A Pakistani vendor makes a design on a camel to attract customers at a cattle market set up for the upcoming Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha in Karachi, Pakistan, on Aug. 11, 2018. The holiday celebration begins in Pakistan on Aug. 21. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

Flames rise from the funeral pyre of former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the banks of the River Yamuna in New Delhi, India, on Aug. 17, 2018. Thousands of Indians gathered Friday as the funeral pyre was lit for Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist politician respected across the political spectrum. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

An aerial view of a makeshift compound in the desert area of Amalia, N.M. New Mexico forensic investigators announced Aug. 16, 2018, that a highly decomposed body found at the desert compound in New Mexico has been identified as a missing Georgia boy whose father is accused of kidnapping him and performing purification rituals on the severely disabled child. The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator said that the remains were those of Abdul-ghani Wahhaj. (AP Photo/Brian Skoloff)

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