45 million olive trees in Crete, a €45 million scandal in Greece, a €45 million resort in Fodele, and 45 million blog readers

Olive groves near Loutra, in the hills above Rethymnon, near Arkadi Monastery … Crete has about 45 million olive trees (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I keep on saying it, again and again, and it remains true: I am overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog. These figures are about to reach 45 million this evening (29 July 2026), the third time this month the figures have passed the million mark, reaching 44 million less than a fortnight ago (16 July 2026), and 43 million 12 days earlier (4 July 2026).

These viewing and reading figures are overpowering at time, with this blog continuing 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 24 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone, and about 2.4 million hits before the end of July.

Half of all hits or reader figures have been within the past five or six months, with 22.5 million hits since 4 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 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 80,000-90,000 a day so far this month. Yet, ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.

A monument to El Greco in Iraklion … a new €45 million resort is being developed at Fodele, his birthplace west of Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

To put this latest figure of 45 million into perspective:

The continuing conflict in Iran and the Middle East has pushed an additional 45 million people into acute hunger and food insecurity because of price rises, including food, oil and shipping costs. These are 45 million people Trump does not care about.

Israel has launched a multi-million-dollar campaign to reshape public opinion in the US amid declining support for its policies, according to a Wall Street Journal report last month (July 2026). The report says the Israeli government has signed a contract worth more than $45 million with Brad Parscale, a long-time ally of Trump, as part of a broader effort that includes AI-powered messaging, digital outreach and media campaigns.

One element of the initiative involves AI-generated text messages sent to millions of Americans by a supposed group called ‘Friends for Peace,’ encouraging recipients to discuss Israel, Iran and regional security.

With all the hype about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, I am reminded that Homer called olive oil ‘Liquid Gold’ and it has been part of Greece’s history since antiquity. Crete has about 45 million olive trees that produce around 50% of all Greek olive oil. These olive trees outnumber the island’s human population by roughly 50 to 1. The groves produce more olive oil than all the rest of Greece combined, with the majority belonging to the highly regarded Koroneiki variety.

The world’s oldest olive tree is in the village of Ano Vouves near Kissamos in the Chania area. The tree is 3,000 years old and still produces olives. It has a trunk with a circumference of 12.5 metres and a diameter of 4.6 metres, and has been declared a Natural Monument.

A €45 million tourism development is being built in Fodele on the north coast of Crete, about 26 km west of Iraklion, on the road to Rethymnon. Fodele Hills is planned as a new tourist complex with a capacity for 298 people. Fodele is the birthplace of the artist El Greco and until now it has attracted visitors because of its orange and lemon groves, the house where it is said Doménikos Theotokópoulos (El Geco) was born, the Byzantine-era Panagia Church with its frescoes, and the monastery of Agiou Panteleimona with several 17th-century icons.

A widespread agricultural subsidy fraud ring in Greece siphoned off up to €45 million a year, with false claims to owning pastures, archaeological sites, and even non-existent land to collect European farming subsidies. The plot, uncovered by the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) and local authorities, reached all levels of political life in Greece. The 22 people charged included four sitting deputies in parliament from the ruling New Democracy party and former officials of the state agricultural payment agency.

The scheme exploited a poorly maintained land registry following EU policy changes in 2014. Fraudsters declared fictitious plots, fake livestock, and impossible locations – such as banana plantations on Mount Olympus – to siphon off millions.

The fraud went detected for years, and the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was forced to admit the scandal had revealed ‘the state’s inadequacy’ in dealing with corruption. The scandal forced the resignation of five senior government officials, including the migration minister, Makis Voridis, a one-time far-right activist who was the agriculture minister when the scheme was being run.

Trump’s vanity parade last year, with a massive display of military might, cost $45 million. Although the parade was supposed celebrate the 250th birthday of the US army, Trump monopolised it to celebrate his own 79th birthday.

Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle who now owns the Eagle and Child in Oxford, gave about $45 million to a nonprofit backing Trump’s 2024 election campaign. According to The Wall Street Journal. The funding was not subject to disclosure rules and was not been reported until a few weeks ago (June 2026). Meanwhile, the restoration work on the Eagle and Child in Oxford seems to be inadequately funded and remains closed, with the buildings covered in cladding and scaffolding.

45 million sq metres is 45,000 sq km. Although Estonia, the most northerly of the three Baltic States, is often described as a small country, it has an area of 45,000 sq km and is larger than Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark or Switzerland.

Paris is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, with 45 million tourists every year in the Paris Region. With 45 million tourists a year, Mexico is the sixth most visited country in the world, according to UN statistics. France is top of the list, followed by Spain, the US, Turkey, Italy and then Mexico. Forecasts by VisitBritain predict over 45 million inbound visitors to the UK in 2026.

Six publishers turned down The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, but it went on to sell 45 million copies.

45 million minutes is equal to 85 years, 7 months, 15 days and 16 hours. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take over 85½ years, from mid-December 1940, to reach today’s figure of 45 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 45 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.

Paris is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, with 45 million tourists every year in the Paris Region (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

60 years later, this has been a very different World Cup to the one I rejoiced in as a teenager in summer 1966

The former Saint Michael’s Convent above the beach in Ballinskelligs … the preferred venue for discerning teenagers for the 1966 World Cup final (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

At the outset, as my own personal protest against the state of politics in Trump’s USA and the ways he and it are infecting, devouring and destabilising the world, I decided not to watch any 2026 FIFA World Cup matches broadcast from the US, although I was watching games played in the two other co-host nations, Canada and Mexico.

Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino, a pair of presidents, have come to embody everything that is wrong about this year’s competition. From the beginning, right up to its end this evening, this World Cup has been a complete disaster, one shambles after another. There has been nothing but one litany after another of controversies, from FIFA’s ticket pricing, to entertaining Trump’s political meddling, along with logistical and environmental problems, cost over-runs, disgraceful abuses of human rights and displays of ugly and unchecked racism.

Harsh US immigration and visa restrictions have targetted players, officials, journalists, referees and fans from several nations. A travel ban blocked fans from Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, and Senegal attending matches in the US, the Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein was detained for seven hours on his arrival, and the Somali referee Omar Artan was denied entry to the US.

Trump wanted FIFA to give Iran’s place to Italy, and threatened that the safety of the Iranian team could not be guaranteed. That failed to stop Iran, but Iran’s team was forced to relocate its training base from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana, Mexico, they constantly bullied and harassed each time they played in the US, the team’s ticket allocation was revoked, and many of the coaching and administrative staff were denied visas.

It was clear Infantino was never going to make good on his pledge that ‘any team, including the supporters and officials of that team, who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup.’ But then this is the same man who presented a newly-invented ‘FIFA Peace Prize’ to Trump last December – whoever thought he would want signs of peace and goodwill at this World Cup?

The national teams from Senegal and Uzbekistan faced unusually strict security checks when they arrived in the US, including individual body searches, the Uruguay national team complained if excessive security checks, and security personnel in Atlanta searched Egyptian fans but not Argentinian fans. In Arlington, Texas, ahead of Egypt’s match against Australia, a Dallas police officer pushed Egypt’s assistant coach and other members of the Egyptian delegation.

Spanish-speaking reporters have been asked by FIFA moderators to use English and their questions have often been turned away, even though Spanish is one of FIFA’s seven official languages, Mexico, one of the three co-hosts, is the world's most populous Spanish-speaking country, and two countries in the final this evening are Spanish-speaking.

FIFA officials have been accused of making racist and white supremacy gestures. At the match between Paraguay and France, a former Paraguay goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert referred to France as ‘a squad from Africa’, Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla made widely condemned racist comments in which she mocked Kylian Mbappé’s background and education.

Folarin Balogun’s red card and automatic one-match suspension ought to have ruled him out of the US match against Belgium. But Trumpphoned a friend, intervened directly with Infantino and then rejoiced that due to his special pleading FIFA had ‘made the right decision’. Belgium and UEFA condemned FIFA’s decision. That alone put an end to my personal boycott. I joined the world in watching and rejoicing when Belgium defeated the US.

I watched England’s defeat by Argentina on Wednesday night in the Old George in Stony Stratford, and I stayed up late last night at home to watch England’s 6-4 win over France in the third place play-off, a truly memorable match.

But my memories of this year’s World Cup are going to be distinctively different from my memories of the World Cup final 60 years ago in 1966.

It was a weekend in July, I was in my teens, it was summer, and it was 30 July 1966. It was the year Ireland had gone over the top in marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916.

My parents had a real fear that I might fail Irish in the ‘Inter Cert’ the following year. Failing Irish at the time meant failing the full exam outright, and the consequences for families were dire: repeat the full year, which still provided no guarantee of success a second time; leave school and find an apprenticeship, which was never considered in a family such as mine; or being sent to England to a school such as Downside or Ampleforth.

Three of us were packed off to Ballinskelligs for a month to learn Irish. I boarded with cousins from Co Cork and learned much from them too; and when I returned home and was asked whether I had learned much Irish I answered smartly, ‘No, but I learned a lot about French, eh, French kissing.’

During that month in Coláiste Mhichíl, I also remember learning Irish dancing, boring evenings listening to the old seanachaí, reading Anne Frank’s Diaries and JD Sallinger’s Catcher in the Rye, having my first smoke, being challenged to go ‘skinny dipping’, and my first kiss.

I was the butt of some slight humour – but all in good taste – because of what must have been a tinge of an English accent at the time. On the other hand, I remember feeling negative about that year’s commemorations of the Easter Rising in 1916. If Irish colleges were about shaping national identity then, despite my age, I realised already some people wanted to classify me as an outsider.

There was no doubt on Saturday afternoon, 30 July 1966, who I was going to support in the World Cup Final. The main adventure that weekend was finding a place to watch it. Ballinskelligs was then a remote part of Kerry, it was not only part of the Gaeltacht, but it was ‘single-channel land’ and – even then – there were few homes there with a television, and we were never going to risk being caught in a pub at that age.

Two first cousins, Dick and Tom Barrett from Millstreet, Co Cork, came up with a cunning plan. They knew some nuns from the Presentation convent in Millstreet who were staying in Saint Michael’s Convent, the nuns’ summer house above the beach in Ballinskelligs. There we would be hidden safely from anyone listening out for any teenagers at the summer college risking to speak English, to say nothing about cheering on the English football team.

Not only did the nuns welcome us, and allow us to monopolise the one television in their best room, but they even brought in biscuits, cake and soft drinks to keep us fuelled for the afternoon. For us, that alone was almost more memorable than Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick and England’s controversial third goal – did it go over the line fully?

England had a 4-2 win over West Germany after extra time. It was the first and only time that England hosted or won the World Cup and it remains England’s last final in a major international football tournament, and still is England’s only World Cup final to date.

We stayed right through to see Bobby Moore receiving the cup and the team receiving their medals.

We were not watching alone. The British television audience peaked at 32.3 million viewers, making it Britain’s most-watched television event ever.

When I returned in August after a month in Ballinskelligs, my parents never showed any evidence they had received any reports of my independent behaviour. And, yes, I passed Irish in the ‘Inter Cert’ the following year – albeit a pass on a pass paper – and went on to finish the ‘Leaving Cert’ in 1969 at Gormanston College, Co Meath.

I can still remember with joy, delight and glee, England’s first, and so far only, World Cup title back in 1966. As I wait for this evening’s World Cup final between Spain and Argentina, I know which team I am disappointed is not playing tonight.

I do not particularly want to see tonight’s half-time show, which is nothing less that the Americanisation and commercialisation of the game. But I going to be eager to see how uncomfortable Trump is as he finds himself sitting beside the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, the western politician he seems to dislike most, and hopefully to see Trump squirm as he presents the World Cup to Spain too.

And I shall be smiling too as I recall teenage memories of that summer afternoon in July 60 years ago.

A summer stroll on the beach in Ballinskelligs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 60, Monday 6 July 2026

‘The Daughter of Jairus’ by James Tissot (1836-1902)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Fifth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity V, 5 July 2026).

I stayed up until the early hours of this morning, long past 4 am, watching England’s 3-2 win over Mexico on television, including thee two goals from Jude Bellongham, Harry Kane’s penalty, and those nail-biting 11 minutes 11 minutes that were added on. The High Street below is now quiet, and before today begins I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Christ healing the woman in the crowd … a modern Orthodox icon

Matthew 9: 18-26 (NRSVA):

18 While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, ‘My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.’ 19 And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. 20 Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, 21 for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.’ 22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.’ And instantly the woman was made well. 23 When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute-players and the crowd making a commotion, 24 he said, ‘Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. 25 But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. 26 And the report of this spread throughout that district.

‘My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live’ (Matthew 9: 18) … ‘Spectral Child’ on Thomas Street, Limerick, by Dermot McConaghy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Matthew 9: 18-26) tells the stories of how Christ responds to the plight of two very different people: a young girl who is on her deathbed, and a woman who has been suffering for the previous 12 years, as long as the young girl has lived.

The women in this reading remain unnamed, like so many women in the New Testament: three women in all, the dying girl, the older woman, and the girl’s mother.

The young girl who is on her deathbed and her mother are from a religious family; the older woman who interrupts this story, and who disrupts Jesus and intrudes on the crowd, has endured a lifetime of suffering. The two principal women in this story both suffer and are marginalised, are seen as not worth bothering about, because of their gender and because of their age.

This reading reminds us that Christ calls the unnamed, the marginalised, and the long-suffering from the outside into the community. They call out, just as the psalmist cries out, ‘Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord’ (Psalm 130: 1).

God is attentive to our pleas, despite everything that has gone wrong, God forgives, God is merciful, God offers unfailing love and freedom, God’s love for us surpasses the love of any father or mother for their children.

In this Gospel reading, one of the key people is the daughter of a leading member of the local synagogue. We know him as Jairus because of the accounts in the other synoptic Gospels (see Mark 5: 21-43; Luke 8: 40-56), although he is not named in Matthew 9. Mark describes him as ‘one of the rulers of the synagogue’ (εἷς τῶν ἀρχισυναγώγων), Luke says he is ‘a leader of the synagogue (ἄρχων τῆς συναγωγῆς), while Matthew describes him simply as an ἄρχων (archon), and omits any reference to a synagogue, a word that has come to be inserted by convention in the English translations.

Matthew does not give the girl’s age, she has already ‘just died’ (ἄρτι ἐτελεύτησεν), and her father’s request is that Jesus lay his hand upon her ‘and she will live [again]’ (Matthew: καὶ ζήσεται). In other words, in Matthew he asks Jesus to reverse her death rather than prevent it, in contrast with the accounts of Mark and Luke.

The timings and settings differ in the Gospels: in Mark and Luke, the story follows the exorcism at Gerasa; Jairus comes up to Jesus as soon as he gets out of the boat.  In Matthew, this event is first preceded by three others, healing the paralytic, the calling of Matthew, and the New Wine in Old Wineskins. In Matthew’s version, Jesus is in Matthew’s house, eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners and debating about fasting with Pharisees and disciples of John the Baptist, when the distraught father arrives.

Mark and Luke report a large crowd (ὄχλος) following Jesus around and pressing against him (συνέθλιβον/συνέπνιγον αὐτόν) as he follows Jairus to his house. Matthew does not mention this, and it is only Jesus and his disciples (μαθηταὶ) who follow the ruler back to his house.

The narrative is interrupted with the arrival on the scene of a woman who had a haemorrhage (Matthew: αἱμορροοῦσα haimorroousa, having had a flow of blood that is vaginal or uterine. Mark and Luke say she has been οὖσα ἐν ῥύσει αἵματος (ousa en rhysei haimatos, being with a flow of blood), for 12 years. Mark and Luke tell us that during all this time nobody could heal her, with Mark dramatically adding she had spent all she had on physicians to no avail.

The woman touches the fringe of his cloak. Each tassel of the tallit or prayer shawl worn by pious Jews has eight threads (when doubled over) and five sets of knots, totalling 13; the sum of these numbers is 613. The 613 tzizit or knotted fringes are reminders of the 613 commandments, precepts or mitzvot in Jewish tradition. They include positive commandments, to perform an act (mitzvot aseh), and negative commandments, to abstain from certain acts (mitzvot lo taaseh). The negative commandments number 365, which coincides with the number of days in the solar year, and the positive commandments number 248, said to be the number of bones and main organs in the human body (Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 23b–24a). This reflects the idea that donning a tallit or prayer shawl with tzitzit reminds its wearer of all 613 Torah commandments.

When this woman touches Jesus’ cloak, her bleeding stops immediately, according to Mark and Luke, but in Matthew she is not healed until after Jesus tells her: ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well’ (verse 22).

Matthew’s account of the bleeding woman also ends there (Matthew 9:20–22). But for Mark and Luke, her act of touching his cloak appears to disturb Jesus, who seems agitated or even angry, and we are told that the woman came with φοβηθεῖσα καὶ τρέμουσα (phobētheisa kai tremousa, ‘in fear and trembling’) as he feels that power had gone out of him.

Jesus asks around the crowd who touched him or touched his clothes. Luke says all in the crowd deny doing this, and Peter says that crowds are pressing against Jesus; Mark has the disciples giving this explanation.

Jesus is not satisfied, and he keeps inspecting the crowd until the woman, trembling in fear, falls at Jesus' feet and admits that it was her. The accounts in Mark and Luke conclude with Jesus telling her ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease’, or ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace’ (see Mark 5: 25-34; Luke 8: 43-48).

In Mark’s and Luke’s narrative, people come (Mark: ἔρχονται, plural) or someone comes (Luke: ἔρχεταί τις, singular) with the news that that the daughter of Jairus had died, and Jairus is advised not to trouble Jesus any further. However, Jesus responds: ‘Do not fear, only believe’, with Luke extending the quote with ‘and she will be saved’ (σωθήσεται).

When he arrives at the house, Jesus does not let anyone follow him inside, ‘except Peter, James and John, the brother of James’ (Mark 5: 37), with Luke adding ‘and the father of the child and the mother’, later also added by Mark (Mark 5: 40; Luke 8: 49-50). For Matthew, the daughter is already dead from the start, so this part of the event does not unfold.

At the house, Mark and Luke report that Jesus ‘saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly’ (Mark 5: 38; Luke 8: 52); according to Matthew, he ‘saw the flute-players and the crowd making a commotion’ (Matthew 9: 23). He tells all present that the girl is not dead but asleep; in Matthew, Jesus even tells the crowd ‘Go away’. But the crowd laughs at Jesus. Mark says Jesus puts the crowd outside; Matthew says they were put outside, but witout mentioning who does it (verse 25); Luke does not report this, but instead emphasises that the crowd ‘knew she had died’.

Jesus then goes back inside the house (Mark, Matthew). He takes the girl by the hand, and she gets up. In Mark’s account, the Aramaic phrase Talitha koum – transliterated into Greek as ταλιθα κουμ and reportedly meaning, ‘Little girl, I say to you, get up!’ – is attributed to Jesus (Mark 5: 41). In Luke, Jesus says ‘My child, get up!’ For Matthew, Jesus says nothing and is silent verse 25).

The accounts in Mark and Luke end with Jesus commanding that the girl should be fed and that Jairus and his wife should tell no-one what had happened. On the other hand, Matthew concludes by saying: ‘And the report of this spread throughout that district’ (verse 26).

Does it matter that Matthew’s account, which we are reading today, does not name Jairus, nor that it does not relate his status to the synagogue? Religious position and social status are of little value when a small child is struck with a death-threatening illness or disease.

In both cases these women are ritually unclean … a bleeding woman, a dying or dead women. Jesus should not touch them. Yet their plight touches his heart, and he reaches out to them with a healing touch.

One young woman is restored to her place in her family and in her community. One older woman, who has lost everything, who is at risk of being marginalised, even by the Disciples, is offered the hope of her proper place.

The crowd who gather around Jesus by the lake becomes a large crowd pressing in on him.

Too often in a crowd, it is those who get to the front first, who have the loudest voices, who are heard, whose demands are met.

But in this case, it is not the loud and the proud, the rich or the famous, who grab the attention of Christ – it is a weak, timid, neglected impoverished, exploited and sick woman. All her money has gone on quacks, and she has no man to speak up for her.

But look at what Christ does for her. Without knowing it, he heals her. And when he realises what has happened, he calls her ‘Daughter.’

In a society where men had the only voices, where to have a full place in society was to be known as a Son of Israel, she is called ‘Daughter.’ She too has a full and equal place in society, in the world, and before God.

It is shocking that when the unnamed girl dies the first reaction of some key local figures is to upbraid her father for seeking help, and not to offer him comfort and sympathy.

Their lack of compassion and sympathy contrasts sharply with the compassion Christ shows for both the older and the younger woman.

We were challenged each day to ask ourselves: how is the Gospel good news for those on the margins? The Gospel is Good News for those on the margins as we read in today’s Gospel story. But … only if we read it and if we put it into practice.

‘And the report of this spread throughout that district’ (Matthew 9: 26) … when and how is the Gospel good news for people on the margins? … newspapers at a kiosk near the Marina in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 6 July 2026):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 5 to 11 July 2026 (pp 16-17), is ‘Faith in the Midst of Fractures’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a reflection by the Revd Godfrey Owino Adera, Anglican priest, theologian, and lecturer at Saint Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya.

The USPG prayer diary today (Monday 6 July 2026) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, move theologians, church leaders, and all followers of you to be perceptive of the needs in our communities and how we can respond in your justice, truth, and wisdom.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everlasting God,
by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church
is governed and sanctified:
hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people,
that in their vocation and ministry
they may serve you in holiness and truth
to the glory of your name;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Grant, O Lord, we beseech you,
that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered
by your governance,
that your Church may joyfully serve you in all godly quietness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
send down upon your Church
the riches of your Spirit,
and kindle in all who minister the gospel
your countless gifts of grace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘Christ raises the daughter of Jairus’ (left), in the Hardman window by JH Powell at the west end of the nave in Saint Nicholas Church, Adare, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition copyright © 2021, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Ten good reasons why I am not going to the pub to watch any World Cup games played in the US

I have decided not watch any of this year’s World Cup matches played in the US

Patrick Comerford

I have spent much of the day in London, meeting a writer fried from New Zealand, and now I’m on my way back to Milton Keynes, hoping to find an appropriate place in Stony Stratford this evening to join friends and neighbours watching the opening match in this year’s World Cup tournament, when the co-hosts Mexico plan South Africa.

Mexico is one of the three host nations, each staging its own opening ceremony ahead of its first match. Canada follows tomorrow night (Friday 12 June 2026), with its first game against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Toronto. The USA hosts the third and last opening ceremony on Saturday (13 June), before facing Paraguay in Los Angeles.

Scotland’s first match is against Haiti in Foxborough, Massachusetts in the far-too early hours of Sunday (2 am, 14 June), and England has to wait almost a week before playing Croatia in Dallas next Wednesday (17 June, 9 pm).

Doubtless, Trump will try to hijack the events, although his appearance at a major basketball game in New York was meet with Booing throughout the stadium – hopefully setting an example of how to welcome him to any World Cup games.

Today’s opening ceremony is in the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, the first stadium to host matches in three World Cups – it was there Maradona blamed it all on the ‘hand of God’ in 1986 and there Pelé passed to Carlos Alberto in 1970.

The opening ceremony in Canada takes place tomorrow at the BMO Field in Toronto while the opening ceremony for the US tomorrow when the USA and Paraguay play in the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, which also hosts the opening ceremony for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

In addition, two extra ceremonies are planned for 4 July as part of the celebrations marking the 250th anniversary United States during the Last 16 fixtures in Philadelphia and Houston.

I still remember my enthusiasm in my childhood and teenage years for World Cup finals: in 1962, when Brazil beat Czechoslovakia 3-1 in Chile … in 1966, as a schoolboy finding a place in Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry, to watch England win dramatically 4-2 against West Germany in London … in 1970, when Brazil beat Italy 4-1 … And who from Ireland can forget Ireland’s performance in Italia 1990, reaching the quarter final and losing 1-0 to Italy in what every Irish fan still thinks of as a victory for heroes?

But, despite all my enthusiasm, I have decided that I am going to watch televised matches played olny in Mexico and Canada, but I am not going to watch any matches played at venues in the US, even though this means I am going to miss England’s three fixtures in the Group Stage, including the opening game against Croatia in Dallas next Wednesday, and the other games against Ghana in Boston, Panama in New York or New Jersey.

Of course, I never had any notion, ever, of going to the US, or any other World Cup competition for that matter. It has never been my idea of how to spend time or to spend money. But if I was so disposed, I have no doubt I would have been refused a visa. And how could I, in all conscience, feel safe on the streets of any city in the US when even US citizens, never mind foreigners, are not safe from the capricious actions of ICE?

And if, in conscience, I would not be safe and comfortable being in the US for this World Cup, why should I feel comfortable and safe at home, watching it from a distance?

But, while I may continue to watch matches staged in Mexico or Canada, here are ten good (or bad) reasons for not watching any fixtures at venues in the US:

1, Haiti has qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 52 years, and plays against Scotland on late on /early on Sunday Saturday in Boston, in the heart of the exiled Haitian community in Foxborough. The national stadium in Port-au-Prince has been controlled by armed gangs since 2024, so the team played every home qualifier in exile, and clinched a World Cup place with a 2-0 defeat of Nicaragua.

But Trump’s travel ban bars Haitian visitors from entering the US. The players and staff have been given an exemption, but their fans have no such exemption. This can only be put down to racism. During the 2024 election campaign Trump repeated baseless claims that illegal immigrants from Haiti have been eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. During ABC’s presidential debate, he claimed: ‘In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there.’

2, Iran’s supporters are banned too. Iran’s first game is due to be against New Zealand in Los Angeles on Tuesday (16 June), but there are real fears that the team may never get there. Iran has qualified for the FIFA World Cup last March, but after months of war Iran has had to switch basecamps from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana in Mexico. Under the conditions of their visas, they will have to fly in and out of the US on matchday for each of their three group games. It emerged last Saturday that the US had denied visas to members of the team’s backroom staff, with 15 administrative officials denied entry.

Iran’s allocation of fan tickets for the group stage was revoked this week just days before the start of the tournament, and the US has cancelled all tickets that have been sold to Iran’s supporters. Since the US war against Iran began in February, the US military targets have included the Azadi Stadium in Tehran, where the national team trained.

3, Omar Artan, a FIFA-employed referee from Somalia and named as Africa’s best referee last year, was refused entry to the US at Miami International Airport despite having a valid travel visa and was deported to Istanbul.

4, The Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein was held and questioned for almost seven hours at O’Hare airport in Chicago, the team’s official photographer was sent back despite having a valid visa, and team members from Senegal and Uzbekistan were taken aside when they arrived and given full cavity searches.

5, The Swiss midfielder Breel Embolo was denied an entry visa – although Swiss authorities seem to have been successful in appealing against the decision.

6, The South African football team faced a 24-hour delay in their departure over a visa bungle, fans from Senegal and the Ivory Coast face restrictions despite qualifying for the tournament, and 90 per cent of Moroccan fans with tickets have been denied entry.

7, Tickets to the games are costing up to $8,000, wich means these are not fixtures for ordinary football fans. Instead, for whom the ‘beautiful game’ has became an ugly game and a game only for the rich.

8, Fans from 27 of the 48 nations taking part need a US visa, costing between $185 and $435. This represents wages that an average person in many countries in the Global South would take several months to earn. The US has a FIFA Priority Appointment Scheduling System (PASS), supposed to speed up the visa process for fans who have bought tickets through FIFA. But last month, about 150 fans in Ghana had their visa applications rejected.

9, Amnesty International is warning World Cup fans about the dangers involved in travelling to the US. Human Rights Watch has reported how an asylum seeker who attended the Club World Cup final last year in New Jersey with his children was arrested by ICE and deported.

10, FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino had no shame about giving a ‘peace prize’ to Trump, the petulant president who knows how to make demands but not how to keep commitments. When the US was bidding in 2018 to host this World Cup, Donald Trump personally wrote to FIFA promising that ‘all eligible athletes, officials, and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.’

It all amounts to a complete package of lies, humiliation, discrimination, racism, petty vindictiveness and an apparently planned and co-ordinated effort to humiliate black and Muslim players and team officials. So much for football being the ‘beautiful game’. So much for that FIFA ‘peace prize’ for Trump, who is using this world cup for propagamda in the same way Hitler used the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

These may be small gestures on my part. They may have no impact at all. And I don’t want anyone to interpret them or misrepresent them as anti-American protests. Nor do I want any family members or friends in the US to take offence, to take umbrage. I have had too much of the Trump regime, and I do not want Trump to have one more viewer who adds to his capacity to boast that this year’s World Cup was his World Cup and his success, his triumph.

I have decided not watch any of this year’s World Cup matches played in the US

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 35, Thursday 11 June 2026, Saint Barnabas the Apostle

An icon of Saint Barnabas in Saint Barnabas Church in Jericho, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the First Sunday after Trinity (Trinity I, 7 June 2026). The Church Calendar today commemorates Saint Barnabas the Apostle (11 June).

Later day, I plan to meet a visiting writer from New Zealand at lunchtime in London. I hope to be back in Stony Stratford this evening in time to watch the openi match of the World Cup, between Mexico and South Africa, although this time round I plan to watch only matches played in Mexico and Canada, and to avoid any matches played at venues in the US, in my own personal protest against the Trump regime and the way it has hijacked this World Cup in very politically-motivated way. Before today begins, meanwhile, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

An icon of Saint Barnabas in Saint Barnabas Church, Jericho, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 15: 12-17 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.’

Saint Paul (left), the Prophet Elijah (centre) and Saint Barnabas (right) in a window in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

Later this month, I hope to mark the 25th anniversary of my ordination as pariest in 2001 and the 26th anniversary of my ordination as deacon in 2000. Shortly before my ordination, over diner with our friend Canon Norman Ruddock at the Rectory in Wexford, Bishop Noel Willoughby, told me about what he called his ‘Barnabas File.’

He had retired as Bishop of Cashel and Ossory and was then living in Wexford. As a bishop, he told me, he regularly got letters moaning and groaning about what he had done or what he had failed to do. He read them, acted on them if he needed to, and then dumped them. But when he got encouraging letters, praising him, or just simply nice letters, he filed them away in his ‘Barnabas File’ and then take them out and read them when the pressures of ministry and the critics were grinding him down. Those letter writers were to him what Saint Barnabas was to the Apostle Paul on their shared missionary journeys.

In the Church Calendar, today is the Feast of Saint Barnabas. The lectionary readings for the Eucharist today include Acts 11: 19-30, set in Antioch, where we are called Christians for the first time. Earlier, Barnabas had sold all his goods and had given his money to the apostles in Jerusalem (Acts 4: 36-37). Now, in Acts 11, Barnabas arrives in Antioch. He then brings Saul from Tarsus to Antioch, and the two are sent out together.

Barnabas and Paul travel together for such a long time that their names are almost inseparable. When a dispute arises about taking John Mark with them, that dispute ends with Paul and Barnabas taking separate routes.

In today’s Gospel reading (John 15: 12-17), we are reminded that the great commandment Christ gives us is to love one another as Christ loves us (verse 12), and that we are called to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last (verse 16).

Christ tells us we have been given his commands so that we may love one another (verse 17). If we love one another, and if that becomes our priority in ministry, then we too can be like Barnabas to the other Pauls we meet in our Christian life.

Love one another. And that is enough.

Saint Barnabas (left) among the icons in the Baptistry in the west apse of Saint Barnabas Church, Jericho (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 11 June 2026, Saint Barnabas the Apostle):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 7 to 13 June 2026 (pp 8-9), is ‘Safe Churches in Zambia’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Fran Mate, Senior Regional Manager for Africa, USPG.

The USPG prayer diary today (Thursday 11 June 2026, Saint Barnabas the Apostle) invites us to pray:

God of encouragement, as Saint Barnabas strengthened the early Church, strengthen leaders in Zambia. Help them build churches where every person is treated with dignity and respect.

The Collect:

Bountiful God, giver of all gifts,
who poured your Spirit upon your servant Barnabas
and gave him grace to encourage others:
help us, by his example,
to be generous in our judgements
and unselfish in our service;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
who on the day of Pentecost
sent your Holy Spirit to the apostles
with the wind from heaven and in tongues of flame,
filling them with joy and boldness to preach the gospel:
by the power of the same Spirit
strengthen us to witness to your truth
and to draw everyone to the fire of your love;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

With Canon Norman Ruddock (left) and Bishop Noel Willoughby (right) in Wexford in 1998 … a reminder of the ‘Barnabas Files’

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

USPG Conference next week explores what it is to follow Christ faithfully in a time of global uncertainty and division

The High Leigh Conference Centre in summer sunshine … the venue for USPG’s conference, ‘For Christ is our Peace’, next week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I am sorry that I am going to miss this year’s USPG Conference, which has the theme ‘For Christ is our Peace’ (Ephesians 2: 14), reflecting on the Church’s calling to be agents of peace in a world marked by conflict.

The conference takes place at the High Leigh Conference, near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, from Tuesday to Thursday next week (2-4 June 2026). Through Bible studies, workshops, keynote speakers and shared worship, the conference is looking at peace through the lens of Just Peace – not simply as the absence of conflict, but as God’s healing and reconciling presence.

USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is one of the oldest mission societies in the Anglican Communion. The USPG conference each year is a way of connecting with others who care deeply about faith, justice, and the Church’s role in the world today. This year’s conference, ‘For Christ is our Peace’ is an opportunity for people who want to explore what it means to follow Christ faithfully in a time of global uncertainty and division.

The fireside chats over three days next week year will also provide perfect spaces to build relationships, share perspectives, and be encouraged by others who are passionate about justice, reconciliation and transformation.

The speakers at the USPG Conference next week include:

• The Most Revd Alba Sally Sue Hernández García, Primate of La Iglesia Anglicana de México (Anglican Church of Mexico) and Bishop of the Diocese of Mexico

• Bishop Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy, Suffragan Bishop of Willesden in the Diocese of London, the Church of England’s lead bishop for interfaith engagement and a prominent advocate for an inclusive, courageous Church

• Dr Jude Lal Fernando, Associate Professor at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin, and Director of the Trinity Centre for Post-Conflict Justice

‘For Christ is our Peace’ is the theme of the USPG conference in High Leigh next week

As geopolitical tensions, regional conflicts, and deepening social divides shape our world, the conference will reflect on what it means to follow Christ faithfully today.

Through the lens of Just Peace, the conference will examine how Christian discipleship calls us not only to reconciliation but also to challenge and transform unjust systems that create division, deprivation, damage and destruction. It will consider how faith and hope in the risen Christ can reshape our understanding of peace – not as the absence of conflict, but as healing and reconciling presence in the midst of it.

I have attended the USPG annual conference most years, whether in High Leigh or at the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick, Derbyshire. I was a trustee of USPG for six years, a director of USPG in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and I include the ideas in USPG’s prayer diary, Pray with the World Churchn, in my prayer diary on this blog most mornings. So it is a personal disappointment not to be at the conference in High Leigh next week.

One of the things delegates often value most about USPG Conference is that it’s not only about what happens during the event itself: it’s about what we carry home afterwards – the questions we keep asking, the learning we keep sharing, the ways we continue to live out our faith with courage and compassion. As one person said after a recent conference: ‘The conversations do not end here – they’re encouraged to continue.’

Bookings for next week’s conference are still possible HERE. Day tickets are also available for the programme on Wednesday (3 June).

The High Leigh Conference Centre at Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire … the venue for the USPG 2026 Conference next week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Nicolás Maduro and the claims of the kidnapped president of Venezuela to Sephardic ancestry

Nicolás Maduro Moro claimed Sephardic Jewish ancestry in an interview 13 years ago

Patrick Comerford

The kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moro claimed Sephardic Jewish ancestry 13 years ago, although he has never identified himself as Jewish in terms of religion, nor has he ever practised Judaism. In an interview in 2013, Maduro spoke of how his grandparents were descended from Sephardic families but had converted from Judaism to Catholicism in Venezuela.

The Antilles and the Caribbean have long had an important Jewish presence, and a large proportion of the Jewish families in the region are Sephardic in origin, as I learned during a course in Sephardic genealogy and history that I took during the Covid-19 lockdown. The series of weekly Zoom seminars or webinars on Sephardic history was organised by the Bevis Marks Synagogue and the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community in London in May and June 2020.

Researchers recently claimed Christopher Columbus may have been a Sephardic Jew from Spain rather than being from Genoa. They announced their conclusions in October 2024 after 20 years of DNA and genetic tests on part of his remains that are said to be held in a tomb in the Cathedral in Seville.

Maduro’s claims to Jewish ancestry are not unique for a Latin American president: President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo of Mexico, whose 83% approval ratings make her one of the most popular leaders in the world today, is the first Jewish president in a country with one of the largest Catholic populations. Although she is not a religiously observant Jew, Dr Sheinbaum identifies as culturally Jewish and has spoken proudly about her heritage. Her father Carlos Sheinbaum was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, from a family who emigrated from Lithuania in 1928; her mother Annie Pardo is from a Sephardi Jewish family who fled to Mexico from the persecution of Jews in Bulgaria during World War II.

The first Jewish immigrants to Venezuela were found in the Dutch colonies in South America in the 17th century. Jews escaping the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions found refuge and freedom of worship in places such as Recife in Dutch Brazil, although, even after Simon Bolivar’s wars of liberation, Jews faced anti-Jewish discrimination.

Maduro is a classic Sephardic name and is a common name on the island of Curaçao in the Dutch Antilles, which has an extensive Jewish heritage. Both of Nicolás Maduro’s parents – Nicolás Maduro García (d. 1989), and Teresa de Jesús Moros (d. 1994) – were descended from Sephardic families whose ancestors were among Iberian Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century and who moved to the Netherlands.

The Maduro family moved from Amsterdam to the Caribbean in the 18th century, first to Curaçao and then to Aruba in the Dutch Antilles, where they were among the islands’ earliest settlers. Over generations, members of the family migrated from Aruba to Colombia and later to Venezuela, through the coasts of Falcón state and then on to Lara and Zulia states, where some family members converted to Catholicism.

Salomon Elias Levy Maduro (Papa Monchi) bought the Maduro plantation in Curaçao in 1853

The first family member to move to Aruba, Moses Solomon Levy Maduro, arrived in 1754 while working for the Dutch West India Company. Salomón de Moisés Levy Maduro and his wife Sara, daughter of Jacob de Samuel Levy Maduro, were living in Aruba in 1764.

The Mongui Maduro Museum is housed in the former Rooi Catootje plantation house in the Dutch Antilles island of Curaçao. The house dates from 1735, and the museum tells the story of four generations of the Levy Maduro family and its Sephardic Jewish ancestry, with displays that include the family tree of Salomon Abraham (Mongui) Levy Maduro.

Their stories and influence on the social and economic history of Curaçao are told in the museum, and the displays include antiques and heirlooms. Mongui Maduro’s grandfather Salomon Elias Levy Maduro (Papa Monchi) was a businessman who bought Rooi Catootje in 1853 and built a legacy that continues today. Mongui Maduro was raised by his uncle Manchi and spent a lifetime collecting Judaica and Antillana books and newspaper clippings. His collection evolved into a fully functioning reference library through the efforts of his daughter Ena in 2010.

The history of the Jews in Venezuela dates from the mid-17th century, when groups of marranos or Spanish and Portuguese descendants of baptised Jews who may have secretly continued to adhere to Judaism, lived in Tucacas, Caracas and Maracaibo. The Jewish Cemetery in Santa Ana de Coro is the oldest Jewish cemetery in continuous use in the Americas.

The vast majority of Venezuela’s Jews left during the past two decades, under Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez. They left for Israel and the US, as well as Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala. Maduro may have been anxious to assert his claims to Sephardic ancestry in an interview in 2013 as a response to accusations that his regime tolerated or even encouraged antisemitism in Venezuela.

After Chávez was elected in 1998, he began to engineer a campaign against Venezuela’s Jews, and his anti-Zionism often descended into antisemitism. During a demonstration outside the main Sephardi synagogue in Caracas, the wall was scrawled with the words ‘Jews, killers – leave’. Police raided the Club Hebraica in Los Chorros, an upmarket neighbourhood in East Caracas, in November 2004, after the murder of a public prosecutor, Danilo Anderson, and accused the club of storing Mossad weapons alleged to have been used in the killing. Chávez later said ‘the descendants of those who killed Christ had taken possession of all the wealth in the world.’

Maduro was Foreign Minister and then Vice-President under Chávez. At times, Maduro publicised his contacts with Jewish figures in Venezuela. When he announced in 2013 that his grandparents were Sephardim and had converted to Catholicism, he may have been anxious to counter accusations of antisemitism made against his regime. He met Jewish leaders in Caracas, including Rabbi Isaac Cohen of the Asociación Israelita de Venezuela, in 2017 framing the meeting as a dialogue on coexistence. In Maduro met Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi, who was visiting Venezuela in 2018, and during that visit awarded a medal to Rabbi Isaac Cohen.

On the other hand, Maduro’s recent election rival, Henrique Capriles Radonski, who was raised a Catholic, also has Sephardi Jewish and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry: his maternal grandparents, Andrés Radonski and Lili Bochenek, survived the Holocaust and emigrated from Poland with his mother to Venezuela in 1947. His great-grandparents were murdered in Treblinka during the Holocaust; his maternal grandmother, Lili Bochenek, lived for 20 months in the Warsaw Ghetto; and his paternal grandfather, Armando Capriles-Myerston, was a Sephardi Jew.

The attacks on Jews lessened during Maduro’s presidency, but by then many Jews had left Venezuela. After his kidnapping, the now acting President, Delcy Rodríguez, alleged his capture of Maduro and the US attack were a ‘Zionist’ attack. Her claims were seen as a thinly-veiled attempt to scapegoat to the ever-shrinking Jewish community in Venezuela. Venezuela had a Jewish community of about 22,000 people when Chávez took office in 1999. Today there are fewer than 6,000 Jews in the country.

• These links offer closer looks at the family tree of the Maduro family in Curaçao: a genealogical profile of Susana Maduro, grandmother of Nicolás Maduro on Geneanet and her ancestral connections HERE; and the story of Sephardic Jews in Aruba, with details of the arrival of the Maduro family in Aruba HERE.

Four generations of the Levy Maduro family were owners of Landhuis Rooi Catootje from 1853 to 1974

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

Christmas Cards from Patrick Comerford: 4, 28 December 2025

‘La Sagrada Family’ … a modern interpretation of the Flight into Egypt by Kelly Latimore

Patrick Comerford

I sent out very few Christmas cards this year. Instead, at noon each day throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, I am offering an image or two as my virtual Christmas cards, without comment.

The Gospel reading this morning tells the story of the flight into Egypt (Matthew 2: 13-23). My image for my Christmas Card at noon today (28 December 2025), is ‘La Sagrada Family’, a modern interpretation of the Flight into Egypt in an icon by Kelly Latimore, located on the border between the US and Mexico.

Nicholas Comberford’s maps of the ‘Bay of Mexico’ defy Trump’s delusions about the ‘Gulf of America’

Manuscript map of North America, ca late 1630s, pen and ink and watercolour on parchment (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund) … Nicholas Comberford was using the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ almost 400 years ago

Patrick Comerford

The Trump regime’s petty insistence on labelling the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’ is both mendacious and egregious, imposing a name that has been concocted to mollify a petulant man who continues to pursue imperious gestures and to sign egregious edicts for no other reason than to compensate for his inner insecurities and his low self-esteem.

Executive Order 14172 on 20 January tried to the change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in US federal government usage, despite the fact that it has been known as the Gulf of Mexico since the 1550s, a name derived from Mexica, the Nahuatl word for the Aztecs.

Associated Press journalists have been banned indefinitely from the Oval Office and Air Force One because AP decided to continue using Gulf of Mexico. The White House accused AP of ‘commitment to misinformation’ and ‘irresponsible and dishonest reporting’, and Trump says AP continues to be barred ‘until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.’

Historians, geographers and cartographers, as well as journalists, have produced maps that are centuries-old using names such as the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Bay of Mexico, or simply the Bay of Mexico. No historical map names the place the Gulf of America. Why? Simply because there was no USA back then.

The names Gulf of Mexico and Bay of Mexico appear on maps long before Jamestown, before Plymouth Rock, and over 200 years before the Declaration of Independence, and more than 250 years before the Louisiana Purchase, which was the first time the US controlled any land even bordering the Gulf.

The name Mexico refers to the people later referred to as Aztecs, when what is now Mexico was part of Colonial Spain. The name ‘Golfo de Mexico’ first appears in 1550 on a map now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and in an historical account in 1552.

Europeans have used the name the Gulf of Mexico, and the corresponding terms in Spanish and French, Golfo Mexicano and Golphe du Mexique, with consistency from the mid-17th century, although Spanish geographers continued for a time to also use the name of Golfo de Nueva España.

In recent days, I have come across two versions of the earliest English-language maps to refer to the Bay of Mexico or Gulf of Mexico. They have been dated to the 1630s or, more likely, the 1640s or the 1650s, and the cartographic historian and antiquarian Philip D Burden has recently identified Nicholas Comberford (ca 1600-1673) of Stepney, the 17th century Kilkenny-born map maker as the creator of these maps.

One version of the map with the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ is a manuscript map of North America in pen and ink and watercolour on parchment. It is in the Yale Center for British Art, thanks to the Paul Mellon Fund, and it has been dated to the late 1630s.

Another version, recently sold by Clive A Burden Ltd of Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, has been labelled ‘Map of the Bay of Mexico &c’, has been dated to London ca 1650, and has been identified as the work of Nicholas Comberford.

This second map measures 220 x 430 mm on a sheet measuring 250 x 465 mm, and is in ink with green and yellow watercolour wash on parchment. It is in good condition and has an ink notation, ‘This vellam and paper I brought with me out of England as I remember about 18 yeares past the vellam decay’d through the moisture of the place’.

It was sold recently as stock number 9601 by Clive A Burden Ltd rare map dealers. The business was founded by the late Clive A Burden in 1966 and is one of the longest established dealers in antique maps, atlases, books and rare decorative prints, with a particular focus are the British Isles and North America.

Nicholas Comberford’s works have been catalogued in the British Library and are found in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the New York Public Library, the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and some other museums and libraries. He is a widely-acclaimed, leading and important member of the London group of chart-makers, who used similar colours, patterns and techniques, worked on vellum, and lived close to the dockyards at Stepney and Wapping on the Thames. They have come to be called the Thames School.

He was born in Kilkenny ca> 1600, and, according to his own account, his father was Nicholas Comerford, the ‘King’s Gaoler’ at Kilkenny, and his grandfather was Garret Comerford (ca 1550-1604) of Inchiolohan or Castleinch, the Queen’s Attorney-at-Laws for Connaught, MP for Callan, Second Baron of the Exchequer and Chief Justice of Munster.

Nicholas was a life-long member of the Drapers’ Company in London and his maps charted the world from the East Indies and India to Brazil and the coast of North America. He may well have been the first person to create English-language maps that show Borneo, including the area that is now Sarawak and the place where Kuching would later develop.

However, unlike the other members of the Thames School, Nicholas Comberford was not an Englishman, but a Kilkenny-born Irishman, who, as well as being overlooked until recently by cartographers and art historians alike, has been overlooked too in his native county.

The Town Hall in Callan, Co Callan, once held the Civic Mace presented by Edward Comerford … Edward Comerford and Lord Maltravers were MPs for Callan in 1634-1635 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Philip D Burden joined his father in the business in 1979. He wrote and published in 1996 and 2007 a definitive two volume work, The Mapping of North America. It was the first work to list all known printed maps relating to North America up to the year 1700.

Burden argues convincingly that this remarkable English manuscript map of North America was probably prepared ca 1650, in conjunction with a proposal to establish a colony in North Carolina (‘Carolana’). The fact that the manuscript was drawn on costly vellum, as opposed to paper, strongly suggests it was prepared as an official document for a key figure involved in the proposed settlement.

He says the idiosyncratic detail of the map strongly suggests a connection with John Farrah, mapmaker, and former Deputy Treasurer of the Virginia Company, who was very active in ‘Carolana’ affairs at this time.

The English colony of ‘Carolana’ originated in a grant by Charles I in 1629 to Sir Robert Heath, Solicitor General of England (1621), Attorney General (1625) and a member of the council of the Virginia Company.

Charles I named the new territory ‘Carolana’ after himself. Heath had no success in attracting settlers and in 1638, he assigned his rights to Henry Frederick Howard (1608-1652), Lord Maltravers and from 1640 Earl of Arundel, and MP for Callan, Co Kilkenny, Edward Comerford in the Irish Parliament in 1634-1635; Edward Comerford was MP for Callan again in 1639-1649

Lord Maltravers had many interests in the American colonies. He was a member of the New England Company and sought royal support for the English West India Company in 1637. Interest in North Carolina expanded after the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649.

A promotional tract was published in May in a London newspaper, The Moderate Intelligencer, entitled ‘A Description of ‘Carolana’ by a ‘Well-Willer’. A similar tract, William Bullock’s Virginia Impartially Examined, was published a few weeks earlier and was dedicated to Lord Maltravers and Lord Baltimore.

Lord Maltravers, was MP for Callan with Edward Comerford, and planned to colonise Norh Carolina

By far the most important of the ‘Carolana’ promotional tracts came in 1650 as Edward Williams’s Virgo Triumphans, or Virginia richly and truly valued; more especially the South part thereof: viz. The fertile Carolana … (London: John Stevenson, 1650).

Williams’s publication was associated with John Farrar of Geding, Huntingdonshire, formerly Deputy Treasurer for the Virginia Company. He was the author of a number of maps of Virginia at this time, when ‘Carolana’ was often regarded as South Virginia.

Farrar’s map in 1651 uses the name ‘Carolana’ to the region between the Roanoke and the Chowan Rivers. His map is most famous for its inclusion of a great ‘The Sea of China and the Indies’ immediately beyond the Appalachian Mountains. This detail would have been of great interest to Lord Maltravers, who held nominal title to all the land included in the original grant, which extended far beyond those mountains. Farrar’s map claims any successful colony in ‘Carolana’ would have access to ports on this western sea, and with trade with ‘China and the Indies’.

The English manuscript map includes a much vaster area than Farrar’s map – virtually all of North America. However, on the Englishman manuscript, the great trans-Appalachian sea is called ‘The South Sea’, not ‘The Sea of China and the Indies’.

Both the Farrar map and the English manuscript map include the Nansemond River, in Southside Virginia. The Nansemond is one of only four placenames given for Virginia on the English manuscript, along with Chesapeake, Jamestown and ‘Accomack. Burden says all the evidence points to the English manuscript as having been prepared in conjunction with the 1649 proposal to establish a permanent colony in ‘Carolana’.

The fact that there is no sign of the English colonies of New York and New Jersey (founded 1664, and the entire region between the Hudson from the Delaware is labelled the New Netherland helps Burden to be even more precise in dating the map. Fort Orange (founded in 1624), the Hudson River and Helgate are named. Long Island is shown divided by a channel and is similar in form to Sir Robert Dudley’s map of New England (1647), while Delaware (‘De la Warr’) Bay and River are given their present name, first introduced on Lord Baltimore’s map (1635).

He points out too that name ‘Carolana’ was used consistently in England for the region south of Virginia until 1663, when a new grant from Charles II used the spelling Carolina.

In conclusion, Burden suggests the map is no earlier than 1634, the date of the founding of Maryland, and no later than 1664, when the English conquest turned New Netherland into New York.

Burden also believes that the map’s calligraphy was the work of ‘two distinct hands’. He a ‘major chart maker’ would have been a logical choice for such a seemingly important map, and says: ‘A study of the Thames school reveals that it is not uncommon for charts to be unsigned or undated … Chartmakers tended to have geographical areas of expertise and a study of the time frame and region would tend to point to Nicholas Comberford. He was the only map maker identifiable during this time frame who produced charts of North America. There are similarities of lettering also, particularly noticeable with the ‘R’ and ‘A’.’

Nicholas Comberford, however, was known for being decorative, so this would not have been a major production of his, and seems to suggest the map may date ca 1649 to 1651.

‘The South Part of Virginia’ (Nicholas Comberford, 1657)

The connection that Lord Maltravers shared with the Comerford family and with Callan may partly explain the commissions Nicholas Comberford received for maps associated with Carolina, and subsequently he completed two further maps showing Carolina.

His map of the ‘The South Part of Virginia’ was produced in 1657. It is a single sheet of vellum, measuring 38 x 50 cm is mounted on two hinged boards, each 39 x 25 cm.

This chart is in the Heathcote collection. Another copy with slight differences but of the same date is in the New York Public Library.

‘The south part of Virginia now the north part of Carolina’ (Nicholas Comberford, 1657)

Another map of ‘The south part of Virginia now the north part of Carolina’ was made by Nicholas Comberford in 1657. This map in the New York Public Library, is similar to his map, ‘The south part of Virginia’ (1657) and is in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, but the signature reads: ‘Nicholas C[o]mberford fe[c]itt anno 1657.’

These two maps record for the first time many names that are still in use. Some of them, such as ‘Battis Ponte’ on Pamlico River, were probably given by Captain Nathaniel Battis, an early explorer, landowner and settler.

In the title of the New York map, the words ‘now the north part of Carolina’ were added in a later hand some time after the grant of Carolina in 1663.

Nicholas Comberford is a key figure in 17th century art in England, but he is also an important figure in explaining how we came to understand the way the world was explored, mapped, charted and named by Europeans and by English-speaking travellers and adventurers in the mid-17th century.

Only the foolhardy ignore the facts of history, and only the deluded ignore the reality of geography. As I continue to learn more about how his work was so influential as a mapmaker, cartographer and geographer, I can only muse if the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ was good enough for Nicholas Comberford and the Comerford family almost 400, thn thee name ‘Gulf of Mexico’ should be good enough today for an upstart like Donald Trump, his acolytes and sychophants in the Oval Office and his MAGA minions.

Nicholas Comberford, ‘Map of the Bay of Mexico &c’, London, ca 1650, 220 x 430 mm on a sheet 250 x 465 mm, ink with green and yellow watercolour wash on parchment