PHOTOS OF THE WEEK: Hindu pilgrimages and car prayers

By Jessi Dodge · July 30, 2021

(RNS) — Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo selection includes preparations for Hindu pilgrimages, Belgian flood recovery and more.

An devotee with steel tridents through his cheek as part of a ritual, prepares to start off on an annual pilgrimage to the temple of Hindu goddess Sheetla Mata in Jammu, India, Sunday, July 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

Indian Hindu devotees offer prayers before a row of Shivlings, idols symbolic of Hindu god Shiva, at a temple on the first day of Sawan Somvar, in Prayagraj, India, Monday, July 26, 2021. Sawan is the fifth month of the Hindu calendar and is considered the holiest month of the year. Devotees worship Shiva on each Monday of this month, known as Sawan Somvar. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Police officers carry a casket of their colleague, who was killed in a grenade attack, during a funeral prayer, in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, July 30, 2021. Attackers threw a hand grenade at a police van in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, killing and wounding policemen before fleeing the scene, police said. (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)

Christians pray during a drive-in worship service amid measures to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus at the Songgok high school in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, July 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

San Diego Padres fans dressed like friars cheer and hold their hands in prayer during the team's baseball game against the Miami Marlins, Friday, July 23, 2021, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Flood victims shop for items distributed by volunteers at the town church in Trooz, Belgium, Tuesday, July 27, 2021. More than half the residents of the town sustained damage to their houses in the recent flooding in the country. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

A student who was abducted and then released is reunited with her family at the Bethel Baptist High School in Damishi, Nigeria, on Sunday, July 25, 2021. Armed kidnappers in Nigeria have released 28 of the more than 120 students who were abducted at the beginning of July from the Bethel Baptist High School in the northern town of Damishi. Church officials handed those children over to their parents at the school on Sunday. (AP Photo)

Martin Luther King III, center, with his wife Arndrea Waters King, in yellow, and Rev. Al Sharpton, right of Mrs. King, say a prayer together with members of the Texas State Democratic Delegation at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Wednesday July 28, 2021, in Washington. From left are, Rep. Sheryl Cole, Rep. Jarvis Johnson, Rep. Rhetta Bowers, Rep. Ron Reynolds, Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. Carl Sherman, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and Rep. Shawn Thierry. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Archive Photos

Tranquillity, California. Sunday morning service. Migrants from the southwest bring their religions with them to California. Photo by Dorothea Lange for FSA. Courtesy of Library of Congress/Public Domain

Visiting rabbi teaching the Orthodox religion to children at Jersey Homesteads, New Jersey in November 1936. Photo by Russell Lee for FSA. Courtesy of the Library of Congress/Public Domain

A long line of people leave the Greek Orthodox church on King Peter of Serbia's name day, a big church day. While the churchgoers are mostly women, the entire population is more than usually religious. Sunday Church Parade in the Raib. Podgoritza, Montenegro, like New York, U.S.A. has its fashionable church parade on a Sunday morning in January of 1920. About 25% of the people, according to statistics gathered by the American Red Cross, profess Mohammedanism, the introduction of this religion dating back to the Turkish conquests of a portion of Montenegro many decades ago. Photo courtesy of the American National Red Cross photograph collection at the Library of Congress/Public Domain