Patrick Comerford
Once again, this blog continues to reach more and more readers as it reaches the milepost of 23.5 million readers this morning (17 February 2026), having reached 23 million readers only five days ago (12 February 2026) and 22.5 million earlier this month (4 February). These figures follow so soon after passing the landmarks of 22 million hits late last month (20 January) and 21.5 million hits a week before that (13 January). At the end of 2025, this blog had 21 million hits by New Year’s Eve (31 December 2025), with almost 2.5 million visitors throughout December (2,423,018).
So far this year, there have been almost 2.5 million hits or visitors for 2026 by this morning. This means, this blog has passed the half million mark three times this month alone, twice last month, and five times in December.
I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers – a number reached within the past week alone. It then took more than another year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. This blog reached the 10 million mark a year ago (12 January 2025), almost 15 years later. In less than 12 months since then, another 13.5 million hits have been counted.
Throughout last year, the daily figures were overwhelming on many occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in December last, three were in January 2025, and two are in this week in February alone:
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 166,155 (15 December 2025)
• 146,944 (14 December 2025)
• 144935 (16 February 2026)
• 144,866 (14 February 2026)
• 140,417 (16 December 2025)
• 122,398 (17 December 2025)
• 116,911 (30 December 2025)
• 112,221 (13 December 2025)
• 106,475 (27 December 2025)
The latest figure of 23.5 million is all the more staggering as more half of those hits have been within less than a year, since March 2025. The rise in the number of readers seems to have been phenomenal throughout last year, and the daily figures are overwhelming at times, currently running at more than 60,000.
With this latest landmark figure of 23.5 million readers, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 23.5 million people look like?
• Where do we find 23.5 million people?
• What does £23.5 million, €23.5 million or $23.5 million mean?
• What would it buy? How far would it stretch? How much of a difference would that much make to people’s lives?
Astronomers have also calculated that the diameter of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is around 23.5 million km . But this is tiny compared to the Milky Way itself, which is 100,000 light-years wide and 1,000 light-years thick.
Despite Trump’s persistent claims about ‘voter fraud’ in the US, a Brennan Center for Justice study of 42 jurisdictions, covering 23.5 million votes cast in the 2016 general election, found that election officials referred only 30 cases of suspected non-citizen voting for further investigation. This represented approximately 0.0001% of the total votes in those areas.
About 23.5 million people in the US live in low-income areas that are more than one mile from a supermarket, often referred to as ‘food deserts’.
An estimated 23.5 million people in the US are living with an autoimmune disease, and almost 80 per cent of them are women.
Climate extremes have been the main driver of acute hunger in eight African countries, pushing 23.5 million people into emergency levels of hunger. Humanitarian organisations say 23.5 million people in the Sahel face food insecurity, and that 23.5 million people in Bangladesh are facing high levels of food insecurity.
The number of households in England is projected to grow from 23.5 million in 2022 to 25.9 million by 2030.
The population of the New York Combined Statistical Area (CSA) or the New York Metropolitan Area is approximately 23.5 million. Both Syria and Taiwan have a population of about 23.5 million people.
A report this month estimates around €23.5 million in public money is paid to sitting Dáil politicians every year.
Aston Villa signed the Nice forward Evan Guessand last year, with the transfer costing an initial £23.5 million that was expected to rise to about £28 million.
The Netherlands and Belgium have a combined total of 23.5 million Dutch speakers with another half a million more Dutch speakers in former Dutch former colonies such as Curacao, Aruba, St Maarten, and Suriname.
And 23.5 million minutes is 44.68 years, or roughly 391,666.67 hours or 16,319.4 days. In other words, if this blog was getting one hit a minute, it would take almost 45 years to reach today’s 23.5 million mark.
So, yet again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.
Once again, a continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics is the one that shows my morning prayer diary continues to reach up to 70-90 people each day.
It is almost four years now since I retired from active parish ministry, but I think many of my priest-colleagues be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 500 to 600 people or more each week.
Today, I am very grateful to all the 23.5 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.
