Photos of the Week: Biden meets Francis and folk saint Maximon
By Kit Doyle · October 29, 2021
(RNS) - Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo gallery includes President Joe Biden meeting Pope Francis at the Vatican, folk saint Maximon in Central America and more.
An Indigenous family smokes tobacco as part of a ritual in honor of folk saint Maximon, a fictitious Indigenous person who is a syncretism of a Mayan and Saint Judas Thaddeus, on the feast day of both men outside the Maximon chapel in San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. For the second year in a row, the celebration has been reduced amid restrictions to help curb the spread of the COVID-19. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
A spiritual guide lights candles in front of the statue of folk saint Maximon, a fictitious Indigenous person who is a syncretism of a Mayan and Saint Judas Thaddeus, on the feast day of both in San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. For the second year in a row, the celebration has been reduced amid restrictions to help curb the spread of the COVID-19. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
A woman looks at lanterns displayed in roadside stalls ahead of Diwali festival in Mumbai, India, Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. The Hindu festival of lights, marked by lighting lamps and offering prayers to the goddess of wealth Lakshmi, will be celebrated on Nov. 4. (AP Photo/Rajanish kakade)
Stones are placed on a table following a Commemoration Ceremony in Schenley Park, in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. It has been three years since a gunman killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue, in America's deadliest antisemitic attack. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
People gather for a Commemoration Ceremony in Schenley Park, in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. It has been three years since a gunman killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue, in America's deadliest antisemitic attack. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
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President Joe Biden, left, shakes hands with Pope Francis as they meet at the Vatican, Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. The world's two most notable Roman Catholics planned to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and poverty. Photo by Vatican Media
U.S. President Joe Biden walks past two Swiss Guards as he arrives for a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican, Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
President Joe Biden, left, talks with Pope Francis as they meet at the Vatican, Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Photo by Vatican Media
A priest, center, guides married Hindu women performing rituals during Karwa Chauth festival, in Prayagraj, India, Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021. Married Hindu women, seeking long life for their husbands, fast throughout the day and break it in the evening after looking at the moon through a sieve during this festival celebrated in northern India. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
South Carolina state senators Gerald Malloy, right, and Ronnie Sabb, left, look on as Malana Pinckney, 12, center, a daughter of the Reverend Clementa Pinckney who was killed in the 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting, speaks with reporters outside the Justice Department, in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. Families of nine victims killed in a South Carolina church have reached a settlement with the Justice Department over a faulty background check that allowed Dylann Roof to purchase the gun he used in the 2015 massacre. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Reader Photos
Kashmiri Muslim women offer special prayers during the Eid Milad-un-Nabi, which marks the birth anniversary of the Prophet, at the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar, Indian administered Kashmir on October 19, 2021. Thousands of Kashmiri Muslims gathered at the shrine in the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir to offer prayers on the Prophet's birth anniversary. Photo by Adil Abbas
Archival Photos
One of 200 booths at the Catholic Mission Scene-a-rama held in Rochester, New York, October 16-23, 1955. Listening to stories of life in the Nicaraguan jungles in the Rev. Herbert Wadaga, right, S.D.S., of the Mother of the Savior Seminary, Blackwood, N.J. With him is the Rev. Leander Gribben, of St. Fidelis Friary, Interlaken, N.Y. RNS archive photo by Paul C. Constable. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.
Father Louis Janesko blesses members of the Opika family at St. Michael's Church in West Memphis, Arkansas, on Oct. 31, 1948. Nine displaced persons -- all members of the same family-- gave thanks for their deliverance from the misery of DP camps in Europe and for finding a new life in a free country. After leaving church, the family went to a plantation near Proctor, Tenn., where they were to start a new free life in a new world. RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.
