Prayerful, playful, mystical: Some of AP’s most compelling religion photos of 2024.

A monk plays with a dog outside a monastery in Samdrup Jongkhar, Bhutan, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Rev. Yileyvis Cruz stands by as congregants embrace during a service at the Metropolitan Community Church, an LGBTQ+ inclusive house of worship, in Matanzas, Cuba, Friday, Feb. 2, 2024. In recent years, the communist-run island barred anti-gay discrimination, and a 2022 government-backed “family law” allowed same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Gloria Esperanza Reyes makes her monthly offering of flowers and sugarcane syrup to Yemaya, the Yoruba goddess of the sea, in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. She also is venerated as Our Lady of Regla, a Black Madonna at a Catholic church across the Bay of Havana. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Jeremiah Manley, left, and other attendees at The Cove, an 18-and-up, pop-up Christian nightclub, raise their arms in worship on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. The Cove was started last year by seven Black Christian men in their 20s who sought to build a thriving community and a welcoming space for young adults outside houses of worship. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Above ground graves are placed next to each other under the shade of a banyan tree at the Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery, Monday, Feb. 26, 2024, in the Brownsville neighborhood of Miami. The cemetery holds the remains of 10,000 Black Americans, including some of Miami’s most influential figures including Miami’s first Black millionaire, D.A. Dorsey, and Gwen Cherry, Florida’s first Black woman to serve in Florida’s legislature. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

A woman walks down an alley in the Old City of Jerusalem, Sunday, March 10, 2024. Officials in Saudi Arabia have declared the start of the fasting month of Ramadan after sighting the crescent moon Sunday night. The announcement marks the beginning of Ramadan for many of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Hats reading, “God, Guns and Trump,” and “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president,” are sold at a campaign rally for former president Donald Trump in Vandalia, Ohio, on Saturday, March 16, 2024. Trump, who is coasting into a third Republican presidential nomination, continues to draw strong support from evangelicals and other conservative Christians. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Khenpo Paljor, a Tibetan lama from Des Moines, Iowa, leads a prayer at the Birthplace of Antioch marker, Saturday, March 16, 2024, in Antioch, Calif. Participants of the event titled “May We Gather” placed traditional Tibetan scarves on the marker as they prayed for peace and harmony. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vasquez)

Children run past a mural memorializing 19 locals who were shot and burned in Camargo, Mexico, as they attempted to migrate to the U.S., in Comitancillo, Guatemala, Tuesday, March 19, 2024. In this small town, nearly two dozen local migrants have died in recent mass tragedies: either asphyxiated in the trailer in San Antonio, Texas, in June 2022 or shot and set afire by rogue police officers in Camargo, Mexico, in January 2021. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)