Riveting images of faith and spirituality: 30 of AP's best religion photos of 2025

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From a bird's-eye view high above St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, a stunning photograph shows the estimated 250,000 mourners who gathered for the funeral of Pope Francis. Another photo, taken at sunset from a beach in Uruguay, shows a solitary woman wading knee-deep into the ocean to pay homage to the African sea goddess Yemanja.

The contrasting images — a reverent multitude and a lone believer – epitomize the dazzling diversity of themes and settings depicted by Associated Press photographers in 2025 as they chronicled displays of faith and spirituality around the world.

Among the 30 photos selected for this gallery — out of more than 1,000 reviewed by AP photo editors — several vividly captured the fervor and joy of religious festivals, pilgrimages and parades.

In San Bartolome de Pinares, Spain, a man rides a horse through a bonfire in a ritual honoring St. Anthony the Abbot, the patron saint of domestic animals. Marchers with their faces painted like skulls parade in Merida, Mexico, during Day of the Dead celebrations. At the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, the revelers include a woman clutching her dog — both wearing bejeweled sunglasses and flouncy magenta outfits.

Other images — reflecting the collision of faith and war — are somberly evocative.

An overhead shot taken by Abdel Kareem Hana shows scores of Palestinians in Gaza seated outdoors at a long table, surrounded by the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings, as they gather at sunset on the first day of Ramadan for iftar, the Muslim holy month's fast-breaking meal.

In a photo from southern Lebanon, worshippers gather for Easter Mass inside the ruins of St. George Melkite Catholic Church after it was shattered by an Israeli airstrike. At a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, Syria, AP’s Omar Sanadiki depicts a luminous religious icon splattered with blood stains from a suicide bombing the previous day that killed more than 20 people.

Getting to the right place at the right time was the key to producing some of these photographs. Athens-based photographer Thanassis Stavrakas and his colleagues strived for more than a year to arrange a visit to the cliffside Monastery of Simonos Petra on a remote peninsula in northern Greece. Among his indelible images: one of the robed monks strolling along the clifftop, followed by a string of cats.

In southern Spain, photographer Emilio Morenatti spent three days accompanying pilgrims along rugged rural routes during their annual trek to the shrine of El Rocio. The payoff: prize-winning photos — including one in this gallery — of pilgrims on horseback riding through dusty, sunlit woodlands.

The bird’s-eye photo mentioned above — of Pope Francis' funeral — was an adventure of a different sort for AP’s Alessandra Tarantino. Along with a handful of other photographers, she was granted brief access to a rooftop terrace at St. Peter’s to take photos of the ceremonies down below. Their designated spot was next to a huge statue of Jesus.

“I was very focused on the photo,” Tarantino recalled. “We had only a few seconds to take it, and even though it wasn’t a technically complicated photo, I was nervous. I had never been in that position during an event like that.”

"I was amazed by how many people there were, stretching out as far as I could see. ... Everyone’s attention was on Francis' coffin, which looked so small in that churchyard where he had celebrated hundreds of Masses. So small, so distant from ‘his’ people.”

Nervous, perhaps. But Tarantino’s photo captured all of that.

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Photo editing by Ben Curtis and Anne-Marie Belgrave

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.