Photos of the Week: World’s largest Orthodox church, Dev Deepawali

By Kit Doyle · November 12, 2025
 (RNS) — Each week RNS presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo gallery includes opening the world's largest Orthodox church, Dev Deepawali commemorations and more. People wait to pray at the altar of the National Cathedral in Bucharest, Romania. The world's largest Orthodox church has a height of 410 feet and an interior capacity of 5,000 worshippers. Construction began in 2010, with costs currently amounting to a reported $313 million, while some work remains to be completed. (RNS photo/Alexandra Radu) Mothers with babies access a fast lane to visit the National Cathedral in Bucharest, Romania, the largest Orthodox church in the world. More than 315,000 pilgrims visited the new cathedral during a public viewing period of 11 days, with some people waiting in lines for up to 12 hours. (RNS photo/Alexandra Radu) Pilgrims pray at the reliquary of Saint Andrew the Apostle, the patron saint of Romania, inside the altar of the National Cathedral in Bucharest. The largest Orthodox church in the world opened its doors to the public for 11 days on Oct. 26, 2025, with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visiting. The interior, which is not yet completed, is decorated with frescoes and mosaics spreading over 191,000 square feet. (RNS photo/Alexandra Radu) Sikh devotees light candles at the Golden Temple as they mark the birth anniversary of their first guru, Guru Nanak, in Amritsar, India, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill) The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meets at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025, in Baltimore. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain) Pope Leo XIV holds a Jubilee open-air audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) Hindu women light oil lamps at the Banganga pond as they celebrate Dev Deepawali festival in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) Thousands of devotees throng the ghats of the River Ganga to watch a prayer ceremony during the Dev Deepawali festival, where all the steps leading to the river glow with brightly lit earthen lamps, in Varanasi, India, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) Attendees pray during a vigil Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025, in Louisville, Ky., after a UPS plane crashed at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Community members sign placards on crosses during a vigil for those killed and missing after a UPS plane crashed, at the Great Lawn, Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry) Archival Photos Dramatizing a campaign for clean streets, the Rev. Norman O. Eddy, center, with light hair, of the East Harlem Protestant Parish leads some 40 volunteer street-cleaners-for-a-day in sweeping debris from a block where many of them lived in New York City in 1951. Eddy's wife, a co-minister with her husband of one of the parish's three storefront churches, also acted as a leader of the broom brigade. The city Sanitation Department cooperated by providing brooms and a truck to pick up and carry away the piled refuse. The Eddys served with two other pastors in the "group ministry" of the East Harlem Parish, which was supported by six Protestant denominations. (RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.) Bishop Francis T. Hurley of Juneau flies over the mountainous terrain of his diocese in 1974, pursuing his scattered flock from Icy Bay in the north to Ketchikan in the south. From May to November, he covered some 36,000 miles to bring the word of God to the 4,800 Catholics in his vast see. Hurley, 46, found television to be one of the best means of communicating with the people of his diocese. His diocese had a television studio, operated by volunteers. The programs were seen across southeast Alaska. The programming, which included half-hour shows several times a week including Saturday nights, covered all facets of Alaskan life. Hurley also launched a small newspaper. With television programming, a newspaper and an airplane, he reached the people of his diocese — and many non-Catholics as well — as they had never been reached before. (RNS archive photo by George Brich. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.)
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