(RNS) — Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo selection includes Hajj preparations, the Hindu Bonalu festival in India, reader photos of outdoor worship and more.
A devotee of Hindu goddess Kali, smeared in color, performs a ritual during the Bonalu festival at the Golconda Fort in Hyderabad, India, Sunday, July 11, 2021. Bonalu is a month-long Hindu folk festival of the Telangana region dedicated to Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)
A devotee of Hindu goddess Kali performs a ritual during the Bonalu festival at the Golconda Fort in Hyderabad, India, Sunday, July 11, 2021. Bonalu is a month-long Hindu folk festival of the Telangana region dedicated to Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)
A crowd looks on as a bull is lowered from the rooftop of a three-story house where he was sold for the upcoming Muslim Eid al-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice, in Karachi, Pakistan, Sunday, July 11, 2021. Eid al-Adha marks the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim, Abraham to Christians and Jews, to sacrifice his son. During the holiday, which in most places lasts four days, Muslims slaughter sheep or cattle, distribute part of the meat to the poor and eat the rest. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)
Vendors hold their camels while awaiting customers at a market for the upcoming Muslim Eid al-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice, in Lahore, Pakistan, Friday, July 16, 2021. Eid al-Adha marks the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim — Abraham to Christians and Jews — to sacrifice his son. During the holiday, which in most places lasts four days, Muslims slaughter sheep or cattle, distribute part of the meat to the poor and eat the rest. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
A sheep is weighed at a market ahead of Eid al-Adha festival in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, July 16, 2021. Eid al-Adha is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)
Saudi workers embroider Islamic calligraphy, using either silver thread or silver thread plated with gold, during the final stages in the preparation of a drape, or Kiswa, that covers the Kaaba, a cube-shaped structure at the heart the Grand Mosque, at the Kiswa factory in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, July 14, 2021. The Kiswa covering the Kaaba is changed every year for the Muslim annual Hajj or pilgrimage which will begin this year on July 19. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
Saudi security personnel watch screens that record passing pilgrims' authorization to participate in the Hajj, at al Zaidy pilgrim reception center in Mecca, ahead of the upcoming annual Hajj pilgrimage, Monday, July 12, 2021. The pilgrimage to Mecca required once in a lifetime of every Muslim who can afford it and is physically able to make it. It normally draws more than 2 million people, but for a second straight year it has been curtailed due to the coronavirus with only vaccinated people in Saudi Arabia able to participate. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
Pope Francis appears on a balcony of the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome, Sunday, July 11, 2021, where he was recovering from intestinal surgery, for the traditional Sunday blessing and Angelus prayer. Pope Francis is 84 and had a part of his colon removed a week ago. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Pope Francis stops on July 14, 2021, to greet police who escorted him as he arrived at the Vatican after leaving the hospital, 10 days after undergoing surgery to remove half his colon to relieve a severe narrowing of his large intestine on July 4, his first major surgery since he became pope in 2013. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)
Reader Photos
Outdoor worship for a Pentecost service at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Cicero, Illinois, on May 16, 2021. Photo by Carol Nenne
Congregants of Salem Lutheran Church in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, worships outdoors for the summer. Photo by Denise Horn
Archive Photos
Two University of Tennessee students hitch-hike their way to a downtown church, in Knoxville, Tennessee, circa 1955. Signs such as this were placed on nearby streets on Sundays, and motorists were asked to “take the hitchhikers heavenward.” The two students “thumbing” their way to church were Philip Martin of Enterprise, Alabama, and Carol York of Knoxville. RNS archive photo by Margaret Ragsdale. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.
The first displaced persons to be allowed to enter the United States under a new law begin to file aboard the U.S. Army transport General Black at Bremerhaven, Germany, Oct. 21, 1948. The DPs coming to America on the ship represent 11 nations and number 813 persons. Speeches by military and civic personages and a concert by an army band marked the sailing of the "Ship of Freedom." Photo radioed from London, received in New York Oct. 22. RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.
