Photos of the Week: Swiss Guards; Holocaust Remembrance

By Kit Doyle · May 10, 2024
 (RNS) — Each week RNS presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo gallery includes new Swiss Guards at the Vatican, Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations and more. Buddhist monks clean Buddha statues ahead of the upcoming birthday of Buddha on May 15, at the Jogye temple in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) Vatican Swiss guards, one of them holding up his right arm and showing three fingers to represent the Holy Trinity, attend a swearing-in ceremony at the Vatican, Monday, May 6, 2024. The ceremony is held each May 6 to commemorate the day in 1527 when 147 Swiss Guards died protecting Pope Clement VII during the Sack of Rome. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Vatican Swiss Guard recruits prepare for their swearing-in ceremony at the Vatican, Monday, May 6, 2024. The ceremony is held each May 6 to commemorate the day in 1527 when 147 Swiss Guards died protecting Pope Clement VII during the Sack of Rome. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) New Swiss Guard recruits line up in formation to practice the march and routine for the swearing-in ceremony on May 6, 2024, commemorating the sacrifice of 147 guards who died protecting the pope in 1526. (RNS Photo/Claire Giangrave) A Muslim cleric walks along a former Byzantine church which formally opened as a mosque, in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday, May 6, 2024. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan formally opened a former Byzantine church in Istanbul as a mosque on Monday, four years after his government had designated it a Muslim house of prayer, despite criticism from neighboring Greece. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) A woman directs a choir during an Orthodox Easter religious service at the Armenian cathedral in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda) Christian Orthodox pilgrims hold candles during the Holy Fire ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead, in the Old City of Jerusalem, Saturday, May 4, 2024. In the annual ceremony that has been observed for over a millennium, a flame taken from Jesus' tomb is used to light the candles of fervent believers of Christian Orthodox communities near and far. The devout believe the origin of the flame is a miracle and is shrouded in mystery. (AP Photo/Leo Correa) Armenian church archbishop Datev Hagopian shares the holy light during an Orthodox Easter service at the Armenian cathedral in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda) People demonstrate against a bill that would codify a controversial antisemitism definition being considered by legislators, May 8, 2024, outside the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh, N.C. (RNS photo/Yonat Shimron) People walk through the former Nazi Germany death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau as they attend the annual Holocaust remembrance event, the "March of the Living" in memory of the six million Holocaust victims in Oswiecim, Poland, Monday, May 6, 2024. The event comes amid the dramatic backdrop of the violence of the Israel-Hamas war after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, the deadliest violence against Jews since the Holocaust, and as pro-Palestinian protests sweep U.S. campuses. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) President Joe Biden, left, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., stand to honor the memory of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust during the annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, at the Capitol in Washington, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Israeli students watch a virtual tour of the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau at the Testimony House, a Holocaust museum in Nir Galim, Israel, on the eve of Israel's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, Sunday, May 5, 2024. Israel holds the day of remembrance each year to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide during World War II. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty) An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man walks by an image of a yellow Star of David that reads "Jude," or Jew in German, resembling the one Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany, that was projected on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City on the eve of annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, Sunday, May 5, 2024. The annual Israeli memorial day for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust of World War II begins at sundown Sunday. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg) Archival Photos Young Frenchmen and women exchange ideas on ecumenism during a refreshment break in the course of a discussion program near Marseilles, France, in 1964. Sponsored by CIMADE, the service agency for Protestant and Orthodox Churches in France, the discussion series explored aspects of the effort to attain greater Christian unity. (RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.) Two Japanese women bow their heads in prayer before a Buddhist roadside shrine near Tokyo in 1945. This is a shrine to the Immovable Gods. (RNS archive photo by Richard Terrill Baker. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.)
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