Photos of the Week: Carnival celebrations and Lent begins

By Kit Doyle · March 4, 2022

(RNS) — Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo gallery includes Carnival celebrations and the beginning of Lent.

Dancers perform the traditional "Diablada," or Dance of the Devils, during Carnival in Oruro, Bolivia, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. The festival features folk dances, costumes, crafts and music, one of the country's largest tourist attractions and registered on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Carnival revelers show signs for peace in Cologne, Germany, during a peace march of tens of thousands against the war in Ukraine on Shrove Monday, Feb. 28, 2022. The traditional carnival Rose Monday Parade in Cologne was cancelled due to Russia's war in Ukraine. Instead of the parade, the political carnival floats were placed in the city followed by a peace protest of revelers. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Revelers, dressed as "Diablos de Luzon" or Luzon Devil's, covered in oil and soot carrying bull horns on their heads and cowbells on belts representing the devil, take part in carnival celebrations in the small village of Luzon, Spain, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. Preserved records from the fourteenth century document Luzon's carnival, but the real origin of the tradition could be much older. Carnival festivals are celebrated in their own way around hundreds of villages in Spain. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

A person cradles a papier-mache fish as part of the traditional carnival ceremony, The Burial of the Sardine, in Naiguata, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. The Venezuelan coastal town closes carnival season with the Spanish tradition of burying the likeness of a dead fish, as a symbol of burying the past, before the start of Lent, the annual period of penitence, prayers and sacrifice as Christian faithful prepare for Easter. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Lucia Mamani, left, and her son Angel Fernandez, right, both wearing hats made of sweet bread as a symbol of hope for a year without hunger, dance with guests during a "Martes de Challa," or Challa Tuesday celebration, in which devotees bury food, throw candy, burn incense, decorate their houses, businesses, cars, all in a show of gratitude to Pachamama or Mother Earth, in Achocalla, Bolivia, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. The Andean ritual coincides with the Christian holiday Shrove Tuesday, culminating with Carnival festivities to prepare for the Lenten season which begins Ash Wednesday, the following day. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

Lac La Croix First Nation speaker Gordon Jourdain engages in an annual traditional Ojibwe storytelling gathering at the Log Community Building, Thursday Feb. 24, 2022, in Grand Portage, Minn. Oral storytelling plays a crucial role in Ojibwe spiritual tradition, as is the case with other Native American peoples. Believed to be in itself a gift from the Creator, the recounting of tribal lore helps keep cultural worldviews, ethical teachings and religious experiences alive across generations. Jourdain, a native speaker of Ojibwe, earned a doctorate in education and now directs a leading institute of Ojibwe immersion in Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Stacy Bengs)

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, center left, leads a procession to celebrate the Ash Wednesday Mass opening Lent, the 40-day period of abstinence and deprivation for Christians before Holy Week and Easter, outside the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Pope Francis was unable to preside over the commemoration after his doctors prescribed a period of rest for a flareup of an "acute" knee pain. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop of Washington, places ashes on the forehead of a parishioner during the Ash Wednesday Mass at Saint Matthew the Apostle Cathedral in Washington, Wednesday, March, 2, 2022. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Carriers, known as "cucuruchos," carry a wooden platform with a Jesus of Nazareth statue in the annual Procession of Silence from the San Jose church in downtown Guatemala City, Thursday, March 3, 2022. After two years when all processions were suspended to prevent the spread of COVID-19, worshipers resumed their traditions for the start of the Lenten season.(AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Worshipers pray during a service, Wednesday, March 2, 2022, at the Gesu Church in Miami. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent for Christians. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Nepalese people throng the Pashupatinath temple premises ahead of the annual Mahashivaratri festival in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022. During the festival this year, authorities are expecting a large number of devotees at the temple, which has been closed for the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shreshta)

Father Vasile Sauciur, left, and subdeacon David De Jesus, center, hold a service for Ukraine at the Saint Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Los Angeles, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. In Los Angeles, where Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and others live, pray, eat and shop together, there's a range of emotions about the invasion of Ukraine. But most palpable is a feeling of solidarity with the Ukrainians under attack by Russian forces. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Rescue workers and volunteers gather at the site of bomb explosion in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, March 4, 2022. A powerful bomb exploded inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, killing more than 30 worshipers and wounding dozens more, many of them critically, police said. (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)

Reader Photos

Fr. James Gardiner, SA, burns dried palms from the previous years's Palm Sunday celebrations outside the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 27, 2022. Ashes are traditionally placed on the foreheads of the faithful each Ash Wednesday to mark the beginning of Lent. Photo by Josephine von Dohlen

Churches around the world organized prayer services in support of the Ukrainian people in the final week before Lent. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia used altar hangings, rear, in the Ukrainian national colors for its worship on the last Sunday after the Epiphany. Photo by Richard Mammana

Archival Photos

Lolo tribesmen and Christian missionaries, circa 1948. The Yi or Nuosu people, historically Lolo, are an ethnic group in China, Vietnam and Thailand. RNS archive photo by Natalie Hankemeyer. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, left, meets with a delegation of church women from Crittenden County who were protesting dog racing in West Memphis, circa 1955. RNS archive photo by Lelia Maude Funston. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.