Patrick Comerford
I continue to be overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog. These figures reached a total of 49 million about 10:30 last night (31 August 2026), having reached 48 million a week earlier (24 August 2026), 47 million a week before that (17 August 2026) and 46 million eight days previously (9 August 2026), and more than 3.6 readers for the month of August.
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 28 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.
Half of all hits or reader figures have been in little more than six months, with 24.5 million hits since 23 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 about 118,700 hits a day throughout August. Yet, I recall how ten years ago, back in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000, or 30,000 a month.
To put this latest figure of 49 million into perspective:
The UN World Food Programme warns that the strong El Niño weather that is forecast for later this year could push 49 million more people into acute hunger, raising total global food insecurity to roughly 274 million people.
There are 49 million child refugees and displaced minors across the globe who are impacted by conflict, violence, and persecution worldwide, representing 40% of all forcibly displaced people.
More than 49 million people are trapped in modern-day slavery worldwide, according to a recent report, and children account for 12 million of them. Human trafficking generates over $236 billion every year, making it one of the largest criminal economies in the world.
As of 2026, Spain has a total population of approximately 49.8 million people, having officially surpassed the 49 million threshold for the first time in 2025, largely driven by immigration over the past two decades.
Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, has territory of about 49,000 sq km or 49 million sq metres. The country is bordered by Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria. Bratislava is the capital, and there is a population of over 5.4 million people.
Back in 2013, it was said in the US that 49 million Americans, including one-in-four children, go hungry every day, despite the US having the means to provide nutritious, affordable food for all. Inspired by the documentary A Place at the Table, a companion book edited by Peter Pringle offered insights from people at the front lines of tackling hunger in the US.
The contributors showed the inequities in America’s hunger crisis and suggested strategies for solving the crisis, argued the case for school lunch reform, uncovered the hidden persuaders of web food advertisers, explored the role of faith groups in feeding the hungry, discussed the health impacts of hunger and proposed increases in child nutrition programmes.
They argued for the need to move beyond charity-based emergency feeding programmes, and called for providing healthy food for all children. A Place at the Table showed how these problems could be solved once and for all, if the American public decided that making healthy food available and affordable is in the best interest of everyone.
But all those warnings and all those proposals were ignored by decision makers, while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the hungry continue to go hungry. And a good example of the rich getting richer came in recent financial disclosure filings that show that one day alone in June Donald Trump made over $49 million in stock and securities purchases during a portfolio reshuffling.
49 million minutes is equal to 93 years, 2 months, 21 days, 18 hours and 40 minutes. This means that if this blog was receiving just one hit a minute, I would need to have started blogging back in mid-June 1933.
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 almost 1,000 people each week.
This evening, as this blog heads towards 50 million hits, I am truly grateful once again to the real readers among those 49 million hits to date. In particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of people who join me in prayer, scripture reading and reflections each day.
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