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For 59 years, Coronation Street has been telling stories about the residents of Weatherfield, a fictitious town near Manchester. Since December 1960, the ordinary everyday interactions of neighbours and families have been interspersed with the drama that all soap operas need; explosions, kidnappings, crashes and crimes. But in the next few days, a heart wrenching story will be played out in the living rooms of Coronation Street’s 7 million viewers. Young Sinead, 25 years old, with a new baby, was told recently that she had only weeks to live, having been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer. Sinead, quirky, opinionated, kind hearted, will die this week, after celebrating an early Christmas with her family and after some heart breaking conversations saying goodbye to baby Bertie and her on screen husband Daniel. Yesterday, new research priorities were announced with regard to cervical cancer by the new International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection, as researchers aim to try to work out an individual’s unique personal risk of different cancers. And all this in the light of new statistics showing that the attendance of women at cervical cancer screenings is at its lowest for 2 decades. The precise and painstaking scientific work is crucial in tackling the disease itself of course. But the telling of powerful stories to reveal deeper truth is also essential and something that religions know about very well. Jesus created powerful characters, sometimes just in a few lines, in what were known as parables; in order to tell deeper truth about God and about people. And his characters weren’t all holier than thou either; there’s the judge whose personality he paints in just a few remarks; irritable, arrogant but persuadable; there’s the over-busy priest or the builder trying to cut corners. And the heroes of his stories were very often the youngest, the weakest, the poorest. Creative parables are told today as they were then, to reveal deeper truths about the human condition; that we desire to live and are often afraid to die. In order to address a life changing diagnosis like cervical cancer, in order to face the profound realities of life and death, we need both; the scientists and medics whose detailed work achieve an early diagnosis; but also characters created for us to love - like Sinead- whose fictitious death this week will hit viewers in the gut, and might get more young women to the test in the first place.