Patrick Comerford
Once again, this blog continues to reach more and more readers as it passed the milepost of 24 million readers earlier yesterday (20 February 2026), having reached the 23.5 million mark three days earlier (17 February 2026), 23 million readers only five days before that (12 February 2026), and 22.5 million earlier this month (4 February). These figures follow 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 3.2 million hits or visitors for 2026. This means, this blog has passed the half million mark four 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 little more than 13 months since then, another 14 million hits have been counted.
Throughout last year, the daily figures were overwhelming on many occasions. Six of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog have been in this month so far, three were in December last and three were in January 2025:
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2026)
• 195,391 (20 Februay 2026)
• 188,376 (19 February 2026)
• 166,155 (15 December 2025)
• 156,311 (18 February 2026)
• 146,944 (14 December 2025)
• 145,259 (17 February 2026)
• 144,935 (16 February 2026)
• 144,866 (14 February 2026)
• 140,417 (16 December 2025)
The latest figure of 24 million is all the more staggering as more half of those hits have been within the past nine months, since May 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 almost 80,000 a day. Ten years ago, the daily average was around 1,000.
With this latest landmark figure of 24 million readers, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 24 million people look like?
• Where do we find 24 million people?
• What does £24 million, €24 million or $24 million mean?
• What would it buy? How far would it stretch? How much of a difference would that much make to people’s lives?
The US is home to nearly 24 million millionaires, more than any other country in the world. According to global wealth reports, that means, roughly 1 in every 14 Americans has a net worth of at least $1 million. And most of them did not get there by grinding 80 hour weeks at a job … they got there by owning assets. To put that in perspective, the US has more millionaires than the next four countries combined, and the US is home to about 40% of all millionaires worldwide – more than Western Europe and Greater China combined. On the other hand, more than 50% American households live from pay cheque to pay cheque.
Almost one in two adults in the UK or 24 million people do not feel confident in managing their money day-to-day, according to new research. Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy has found a sharp rise in the number of people struggling to maintain a decent standard of living in the UK.
More than one in three people in the UK have insufficient incomes to afford a ‘decent standard of living’, and more than 24 million people live in households that earn less than the minimum income standard (MIS) – the lowest amount people need to take participate in society. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a single person needs to earn £28,000 a year for an acceptable standard of living.
Meanwhile, over 24 million people in Sudan are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, and 24 million or more people are displaced each year by catastrophic weather disasters.
24 million sq metres is 24,000 sq km: that’s the size of Sardinia, the third largest region in Italy; New Caledonia has 24,000 sq km of lagoon.
The Environmental Protection Agency in the US assumes the typical car is driven 24,000 km per year. According to the New York Times, in the 1960s and 1970s, the typical car reached its end of life around 160,000 km.
A ‘Great Cold Spot’ discovered in Jupiter’s thermosphere at its north pole in 2017 is 24,000 km across, 12,000 km wide, and 200 C degrees cooler than surrounding material.
And 24 million minutes is 45 years, 7 months, and 28 days, or 16,666 days, or 400,000 hours, and it often appears in tech contexts as a ‘disabled’ timer on iOS devices. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 45½ years to reach today’s 24 million mark.
It is almost four years now since I retired from active parish ministry. These days, though, 80 to 100 people on average are reading my daily prayer blog posted on this blog each morning. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 600 to 700 people or more each week.
Today, I am very grateful to all the 24 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.
