“Trust us” is the mantra we hear from our political leaders about vaccine delivery. It’s a greater faith exercise than many in the religious world would demand – millions of doses of vaccine will emerge “soon”, “by the end of Q2”, “by September”. Simple math tells us that for 20 million doses to be administered by early summer we’d need to see a million jabs a week – we await evidence this is possible or likely.

…. and we are awash in them. Case numbers, stock market numbers, unemployment numbers, comparisons between jurisdictions around vaccine availability and application and most sadly, numbers of deaths.

For a few years that was my response when people asked what church I attended. Those who came to offer friendship and support were the community of faith that mattered to me, not what franchise we happened to attend. They were an expanded family of care and support for our family.

Tradition holds that Peter was the first pope of the church. But he had a mother-in-law so he had some adult supervision while he exercised his leadership responsibilities. Tradition also suggests that the gospel writer Mark’s version of Jesus’ life is from his travels with Peter and through the stories that Peter told to the early church.