We are writing a special highlight today to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of this project. This retrospective visual story looks back at the evolution of the project from an initial consultation held on March 11, 2020. Katherine Marshall and Olivia Wilkinson, who head this project, also wrote this week in Devex about the present challenge of engaging religious actors with vaccination campaigns. 
 
In vaccine news this week, a point of religiously-related hesitancy has arisen in connection to the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine. As reported in Crux, a Catholic media site, “The Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine used PER.C6, which is a retinal cell line that was isolated from an abortion in 1985.” The Archdiocese of New Orleans stated that the vaccine is “morally compromised.” Some bishops in the United States have recommended that people request other vaccines “if one has the ability to choose a vaccine,” but that the emergency setting of the pandemic means that “that being vaccinated can be an act of charity that serves the common good,” meaning that receiving the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine is still an acceptable option. Joseph Meaney, the president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, stated that, “If you really need this vaccine, you’re in terribly fragile health, you’re surrounded by other people in very difficult health, you’re in a position where you’re very likely to catch the disease, you have all kinds of different factors that are part of the moral discernment and the only vaccine that is available to you is the Johnson & Johnson, it can be moral to take that one.” In other vaccine news, calls for religious buildings to be used as vaccination sites continue, this week in a report from Australia. 
 
We have previously reported on how forced cremations of COVID-19 patients in Sri Lanka have discriminatory effects on Muslim patients who were not given the option to bury loved ones in line with Islamic beliefs and practices. As of February 26, Sri Lanka ended the practice of forced cremations, following protests and international statements calling for a change in the policy. A report from the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) gives information on the state of FoRB in 2020. The report details several secondary effects of COVID that impact FoRB, including scapegoating of religious and belief communities, increased vulnerability of minority religious and belief communities due to economic pressures, state crackdowns on marginalised religious and belief communities, and violent conflict. 
 
Everyday acts of assistance from faith-based groups have been part of the pandemic response from the beginning. Some of the most local faith actors are feeling the brunt of this work, with a report from the Amazon region this week about the entire staff of two Franciscan hospital boats falling ill, probably with the new Brazilian variant of the virus. In the United Kingdom, a small church plant has been working on food insecurity, mental health, and addiction issues around the effects of the pandemic for people living in poverty. In the Kenyan coastal counties, a new assessment from the Network for Religious & Traditional Peacemakers (NRTP), in collaboration with Finn Church Aid (FCA) and the Kenya County Office and Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics Trust (CICC), demonstrates that religious communities have pivoted to the use of other technologies, social media, and small group discussions to continue their work during the pandemic. The assessment concludes that “While there is a relatively high level of COVID-19 awareness and awareness creation amongst religious leaders and their congregants, there still needs to be clearer guidelines on reopening houses of worship, increase in safety supplies, such as hand sanitizer, and identify mechanisms to decrease the digital divide.”
 
Technology continues to be a thread of interest in relation to religions and COVID-19. In news connected to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, missionaries with the church are now being encouraged to use technology more frequently in their work, following changes caused by the pandemic. Technology was also at the forefront of the celebration of Makha Bucha Day in Thailand, where 200,000 people gathered on Zoom for the Buddhist festival. 

International Women’s Day was this week and we recognize how deeply women have been affected by the pandemic’s multiple dimensions. As this email reports on news from the previous week, we will include a full slate of stories on International Women’s Day events next week. Likewise, we will also cover more observations on the papal visit to Iraq.