Patrick Comerford
I continue to be overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog. These figures reached a total of 48 million early this morning (24 August 2026), having reached 47 million a week ago (17 August 2026) and 46 million eight days previously (9 August 2026), the third time this month these figures passed the million mark. Last month, the readership figures also passed the million mark three times: 45 million on 29 July, 44 million less than a fortnight earlier (16 July 2026), and 43 million 12 days before that (4 July 2026).
These viewing and reading figures are overpowering at times, and this blog continues to reach volumes of readers I never expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 27 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone, and almost 2.7 million hits already this month.
Half of all hits or reader figures have been in the past six months or so, with 24 million hits since 20 February 2026. I first began blogging back in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures are overwhelming on many occasions. Of the ten days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were in May (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), three in March, and one in February:
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
The daily average was over 187,000 throughout May, but that figure was distorted by the exceptionally high number of hits on three days. There was an average of almost 88,000 hits a day last month, and an average of about 110,000-120,000 a day so far this month. Yet, I remember that ten years ago, back in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000, or 30,000 a month.
To put this latest figure of 48 million into perspective:
Sudan, Uganda, Iraq and Algeria have populations of about 48 million people – although that depends on who is counting and how they are counting.
Save the Children reports that 48 million children a year are affected by climate disasters.
The US Centre for Disease Control estimates that roughly 1-in-6 Americans – or 48 million people – fall ill from contaminated food each year, leading to 128,000 hospital cases and 3,000 deaths.
Greece continues to experience an unprecedented surge in tourism, with predictions that it could be heading for record-shattering visitor numbers by the end of the year, near to or exceeding 48 million over the annual cycle. These figures are driven by major increases in arrivals from the EU, the UK, and the US, and Greece’s South Aegean and Ionian island regions have recorded the highest tourism saturation of any region in the EU.
The islands of Santorini, Rhodes and Kos are proving to be particularly popular, and the Ionian islands, which include Corfu and Zakynthos, are in second place when it comes to tourism saturation.
Trinity College Cambridge and the University of Cambridge are providing £48 million in the Trinity Cambridge Research Studentships (TCRS) programme, funding up to 300 fully supported PhD students over a decade.
About 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the US each year – and less than 10% of it is recycled.
About 48 million kangaroos live in Australia, outnumbering human residents by nearly two to one.
The Еuropeana online archive collection contains digitised versions of more than 48 million works of art that include thousands of photographs, paintings, books and other artefacts, collected from more than 100 museums and archives all over Europe.
48 million litres is equal to 13 Olympic-sized swimming pools or 64 million bottles of wine. French anti-fraud authorities uncovered a massive wine scam involving over 48 million litres of table wine falsely sold under prestigious regional labels like Côtes du Rhône and Châteauneuf-du-Pape between 2013 and 2016.
The Pan-American Highway is the world’s longest motorable road network. It spans roughly 48,000 km (48 million metres) from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina. It crosses 14 countries, including Canada, the US and Mexico, and several in Central and South America, but the route is interrupted by the Darién Gap, a 160 km swampy jungle between Panama and Colombia with no paved road. 48 million minutes is equal to 91 years, 3 months, 28 days and 8 hours. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, I would need to have been blogging since April or May 1935, more than four year before World War II began.
I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 31 March 2022. These days, though, about 130-140 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning, or up to 1,000 people each week.
This evening, once again, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 48 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 150 or so people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each day.
