Photos of the Week: Severe weather damage to churches, Shinto festival

By Kit Doyle · May 21, 2025

(RNS) — Each week RNS presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo gallery includes severe weather damage in parts of the Midwest, an annual Shinto festival in Japan and more.

Redeemer Lutheran Church is damaged on Sunday, May 18, 2025, along Highway 27 in Somerset, Ky., after a severe storm passed through the area. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Part of Centennial Christian Church in St. Louis, Missouri, collapsed on Friday, May 16, 2025, when severe storms, including a possible tornado, swept through the city. (AP Photo/Michael Phillis)

Women play pickleball at Adventure Commons, Wednesday, May 14, 2025, in Bourbonnais, Ill. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)

Pope Leo XIV tours St. Peter's Square on his popemobile prior to the inaugural Mass of his pontificate, Sunday, May 18, 2025, at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

Participants carry a mikoshi, or portable shrine, near the Asakusa Shinto shrine on the final day of the Sanja Matsuri festival in Tokyo, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)

People attend a pro-Palestinian demonstration to commemorate the Nakba Day in Berlin, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Cambodian town hall officers pray during the annual ceremony of Remembrance Day at Choeung Ek, a former Khmer Rouge "killing field," on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Archival Photos

About 25 young Civil Rights demonstrators spend a night around the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in 1965. The students were allowed the sleep-in after a day of demonstrations outside of Independence Hall in support of Black rights in Selma, Ala. Their objective: “To dramatize the discrepancy between the words of the Declaration of Independence which was signed here, and the actions of the government of the U.S." (RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.)

Workers put up a wooden barricade to close a corridor in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace in preparation for the conclave which would elect a successor to Pope John XXIII, June 10, 1963. All entrances to the Sistine Chapel where the conclave would be held are walled off. The College of Cardinals were sequestered after the conclave began on June 19, where they elected Pope Paul VI on June 21, 1963. (RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.)