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MIKE SPRINGER/Gloucester Daily Times
Mel and Jackie Arsenault stand with the congregation to pray after receiving ashes on their foreheads yesterday during a noontime Ash Wednesday service at St. Ann Catholic Church in Gloucester. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a Christian period of prayer and fasting that ends 46 days later with Easter. Ashes are spread on the foreheads of the faithful as a reminder of human mortality.

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