Patrick Comerford
The viewing and reading figures for this blog continue to surprise me, and these figures passed the 28.5 million mark by late yesterday afternoon (23 March 2026 )
This is the sixth time this month alone that the half-million figure in readership numbers has been passed, already reaching 28 million on 20 March 2026; 27.5 million the previous Monday (16 March 2026), 27 million on 12 March 2026, 26.5 million on 3 March 2026, and 26 million at the beginning of the month (Sunday 1 March 2026), when the hits that day were also the highest daily figure I have ever recorded (318,307).
This year so far has seen a phenomenal amount of traffic on this blog, reaching a volume of readers that I never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits have been within the past eight or nine months, and the total of hits last month (February 2026) was the highest monthly total ever (3,386,504), with this blog passing the half-million mark seven times in all in February.
At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 7.5 million hits or visitors in 2026.
I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers – a number reached five times this month alone. Half of the 28.5 million hits (14.25 million) have been within the last nine or ten months, since mid-July.
Throughout last year and this year, the daily figures have been overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog five were this month (March), four were in February, one was in January, and two were in January 2025:
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 280,802 (26 February 2026)
• 273,022 (27 February 2026)
• 261,422 (13 January 2026)
• 228,931 (18 March 2026)
• 204,275 (22 March 2026)
• 195,391 (20 February 2026)
• 195,061 (23 March 2026)
The number of readers has been overpowering this year and last, with the daily averages currently running at about 120,000 hits a day so far this month. Ten years ago, the daily average was around 1,000.
To put this figure of 28.5 million in context:
A major York regeneration project is already £28.5 million over budget and more than a year behind schedule. But he full scale of the overspend remains unknown, councillors have been told this month. An audit has found ‘critical’ weaknesses in the way the regeneration of the area at the front of York Station has been managed.
Work began in 2023 on the scheme which initially had a budget of £26 million but costs so far stand at £54.7 million, according to the latest estimates. The ongoing Station Gateway scheme has been dogged by oversight problems from its early stages and work has been ongoing since 2024 to ensure issues with the extremely difficult scheme are not repeated in future projects. The project is now due to be finished this summer after originally being slated for completion by May last year.
A painting by the British-born surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) sold for $28.5 million two years ago (May 2024), making her the most valuable UK-born woman artist on the public market.
The painting, ‘Les Distractions de Dagobert’ (1945), was bought by Eduardo F Costantini, an Argentinian business figure, real estate developer and founder of the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. He bought the painting at Sotheby’s in New York with a phone bid.
The opening Saturday of the Milano Cortina Games last month was the most-watched day of Olympics coverage since 2014, averaging 28.5 million television views.
Cameroon, Ukraine and Venezuela have populations of about 28.5 million, Kenya has a total of 28.5 million registered voters.
28,500 sq km is 28.5 million sq metres. Depending on how you measure the land area of an island, 28,500 sq km is given in different sources as the size of the islands of Halki off the coast of Rhodes, where I co-chaired one of the workshops at the Halki International Seminar organised by the Athens-based think-tank Eliamep in 2002; and the size of Gavdos, off the coast of Crete, the southernmost Greek island.
Kherson, Kyiv and Potlava oblasts, three of the 24 oblasts into which Ukraine is divided administratively, are each about 28.5 sq km in land area. 28.5 sq km is the area of Little Cayman in the Cayman Islands and the surface area of Lake Malawi, which is shared by Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique.
28.5 million minutes is about 54 years, 2 months, and 7 days. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 54 years, from the beginning of 1972, to reach this latest figure of 28 million.
It is four years since I retired from active parish ministry in March 2022. These days, though, about 100 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 700 or more people each week.
Today, I am very grateful to the real readers among those 28 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I remain grateful to the faithful core group of about 100 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each day.
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