Photos of the Week

Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s gallery includes the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, the birthday of the 11th Panchen Lama, and more.

Parishioners visit after an Easter Sunday service at Little Zion Church in Opelousas, La., on April 21, 2019. The area has been reeling after several local churches were destroyed by Arson earlier in the month. RNS photo by Emily Kask

(RNS) — Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s gallery includes the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, the birthday of the 11th Panchen Lama, and more.

Parishioners visit after an Easter Sunday service at Little Zion Church in Opelousas, La., on April 21, 2019. The area has been reeling after several local churches were destroyed by Arson earlier in the month. RNS photo by Emily Kask


Buddhist monks pray during a ceremony at the Kelaniya temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 24, 2019, to invoke blessings for the dead and wounded from Easter Sunday’s bombings. Sri Lanka’s president has asked for the resignations of the defense secretary and national police chief, a dramatic internal shake-up after security forces shrugged off intelligence reports warning of possible attacks before Easter bombings that killed over 350 people. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

An elderly woman walks to a relative’s graves at dawn in Copaciu, southern Romania, Thursday, April 25, 2019. On Maundy Thursday during the holy week of Easter, Orthodox Christians in small southern Romanian villages go to local graveyards before sunrise as part of a centuries-old ritual, light candles and small fires, release incense and leave small bags of food on the ground. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Participant adjusts his hat before taking part in an annual Holy Week procession through the streets of Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, on April 19, 2019. Participants wear black clothing, white masks, beat drums and push small carts that make synchronized and loud sounds. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

Bodies of victims lie inside St. Sebastian’s Church,which was damaged in the blasts in Negombo, north of Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019. More than 300 people were killed and hundreds more hospitalized with injuries from eight blasts that rocked churches and hotels in and just outside of Sri Lanka’s capital on Easter Sunday, officials said, the worst violence to hit the South Asian country since its civil war ended a decade ago. (AP Photo/Chamila Karunarathne)

Covered in prayer shawls, ultra-Orthodox Jewish men of the Cohanim priestly caste participate in a blessing during the Jewish holiday of Passover, at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Jerusalem’s old city, on April 22, 2019. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Anoma Damayanthi, a 52-year-old Buddhist factory worker, weeps as she talks about her 25-year-old daughter, married into a Christian family, who was seriously injured in the blast at St. Anthony’s Church on Easter Sunday, at her residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, April 25, 2019. Liyanage herself was at St. Anthony’s, and escaped the bomb only because she left a few minutes earlier with her Christian son-in-law when her 1-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter began crying too loudly. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

Local residents in traditional costumes participate in an annual Easter procession to receive blessings for men and animals at the St. George church in Traunstein, Germany, on April 22, 2019. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)


A portrait of the 11th Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, second only to the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy, is seen as exile Tibetans mark his birthday in Dharmsala, India, on April 25, 2019. The controversial figure has not been seen since 1995, when the People’s Republic of China put him in what they termed protective custody. Many Tibetan Buddhists think of the Panchem Lama as a political prisoner. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia)

A Mexican man carries a bundle of thorny blackberry stems during Holy Week commemorations in Taxco, Mexico. Some bundles of blackberry stems can weigh more than 100 pounds in the annual event that dates back centuries. RNS photo by Irving Cabrera Torres

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