Patrick Comerford
The viewing and reading figures for this blog continue to overwhelm me. These figures reached the 38 million mark at lunchtime this afternoon (14 May 2026). They reached the 37 million mark a week ago (8 May 2026), having reached 36 million six days before that (2 May 2026) and 35 million at the beginning of this month (1 May 2026). The figures have now passed the million mark four times so far this month, and passed that mark four times last month also: 34 million (29 April), 33 million (25 April), 32 million (19 April) and 31 million (8 April).
These viewing and reading figures have been overwhelming in these recent weeks and months and this blog continues to reach a volume of readers that I could never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits (19 million) have been within less than six months, having reached 19 million hits a little more than five months ago, on 9 December 2025. The total hits in March 2026 were the highest monthly total ever (4,523,648), followed by 4,365,464 hits for last month (April 2026); so far this month the figure for May is more than 3.3 million.
At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 17 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. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were this month (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were last month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), three were in March, one was in February, and two were in January 2025:
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 516,358 (by 6 pm, 14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2024)
• 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)
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
The daily average is almost 237,000 so far in May, although that figure is distorted by the exceptionally high number of hits on three days so far this month. There were about 145,000 or more hits a day last month; ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.
To put this figure of 38 million into perspective:
Back in March 2020, Donald Trump said the population of Seoul, the South Korean capital, was 38 million during a White House press briefing. Trump began sharing facts about the country, saying ‘I know South Korea better than anybody.’ He asked, again and again, ‘Do you know how many people are in Seoul? Do you know how big the city of Seoul is?’ and then answered his own question: ‘38 million people. That’s bigger than anything we have. 38 million people, all tightly, wound together.’
This is all from the man who alleges the BBC misconstrued his words.
When I was in South Korea in 1997, as an Irish Times journalist and as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Global Economics in Seoul, South Korea then had a population of about 10.4 million; when Trump made that gaffe three years later, Seoul had a population of around 10 million, according to its own official figures, but no more than that. Since then, the figures has continued to fall, and is now about 9.2 to 9.6 million people. But then, he claims, he knows ‘South Korea better than anybody.’ Just, please, don’t ask Trump to calculate these decreases in percentages, and it doesn’t assure anyone that he knows anything about the Far East while he is visiting China today.
On the other hand, 38 million is the approximate population of Morocco, Poland, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Greece recorded a new record in inbound tourism in 2025, with about 38 million visitors and revenues of more than €23.6 billion, according to the latest figures from the Greek Tourism Research Institute, INSETE.
The Costs of War Project estimates that US post-9/11 wars have displaced at least 38 million people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria.
A study by the Center of Economic and Policy Research revealed last year that, between 1971 and 2021, US and EU sanctions have killed 38 million people around the world. That figure equals the total of 38 million civilian deaths during World War II.
38 million minutes is approximately 72 years, 3 months and 0 days. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 72 years, from mid- February 1954, to reach today’s latest figure of 38 million.
I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 120-140 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning. A similar number have been reading my current series of postings on churches and local history in Staffordshire, and were reading my recent series of postings on the churches and chapels of Walsingham. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 850 to 1,000 or more people each week.
This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 37 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 120-140 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.
