Patrick Comerford
I keep saying it, but it remains true: I continue to be overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog. These figures reached 44 million early this morning (16 July 2026), having reached 43 million 12 days earlier (4 July 2026), 42 million 10 days previously (24 June 2026), 41 million mark two weeks before that (9 June 2026), and 40 million at the end of May (28 May 2026).
These viewing and reading figures are overwhelming and this blog continues to reach a volume 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 23 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone, and about 1.4 million hits half-way into July.
Half of all hits or reader figures have been within the past six months, with 22 million hits since 20 January 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 continue to be 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 were about 71,000 hits a day last month, and an average of about 90,000 a day so far this month. Yet, ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.
To put this latest figure of 44 million into perspective:
Elon Musk gave about $44 million to his pro-Trump spending group in two weeks in October 2024 alone. I closed my ‘X’ account a long, long time ago.
A question on a mural in central Kyiv asks: ‘What is cooler than a family of 44 million?’ Ukraine had an estimated population of 44 million people before Russia’s full-scale invasion. Today, the population of Ukraine is estimated at 37.7 million.
Asia covers an area of more than 44 million sq km, about 30% of Earth’s total land area and 8% of Earth’s total surface area. It is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population.
The England-Mexico World Cup match last week was watched by 44 million people.
After the heatwaves that have left Europe simmering in recent weeks, 44 million people across the United States have been under heatwave warnings since Saturday, with temperatures in the Rocky Mountains and northern plains reaching 43C at the weekend.
A global report on teachers published by Unesco last year shows an urgent need for 44 million primary and secondary teachers worldwide by 2030.
A new Freedom of Information (FOI) request finds that health and safety violations cost British employers over £44 million per year.
The Nationwide Building Society was fined £44 million last December by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City watchdog, for inadequate anti-financial crime systems and controls between October 2016 and July 2021. The ‘weak’ financial crime controls resulted in a serious case of Covid fraud that cost UK taxpayers £800,000. The FCA said Nationwide had been aware that some customers were using personal accounts for business activity, in a breach of its own terms.
An estimated 44 million people in the UK caught COVID-19 between April 2020 and February 2022.
It is said 6 per cent of Europeans – young and old, men and women – admit they have no one to talk to about their problems. It is not a personal failure, there are 44 million lonely people across Europe today.
The print edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica had roughly 44 million words in 32 volumes and 33,000 pages. Reading the entire text is an immense challenge, and the author AJ Jacobs spent an entire year reading it cover-to-cover to write his book The Know-It-All (2004).
44 million minutes is equal to about 83 years, 7 months and 27 days. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take almost 84 years, from November 1942, to reach this morning’s figure of 44 million.
I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 150 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 1,000 or more people each week.
This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 44 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 morning.
