Patrick Comerford
Once again, this blog continues to reach more and more readers, and had 22 million hits by 9:30 this morning (20 January 2026). This follows soon after reaching a landmark a week ago with 21.5 million hits by early morning last Tuesday (13 January 2026). At the very end of 2025, this blog had 21 million hits shortly after 1 pm three weeks ago on New Year’s Eve (31 December 2025), and with almost 2.5 million visitors throughout December (2,423,018). We are less than three weeks into January, and so far there have been over a million hits or visitors for 2026 by mid-afternoon today.
This blog passed the half million mark five times in one month alone last month, hitting the 21 million mark on New Year’s Eve (31 December 2025), 20.5 million on Christmas Day (25 December), 20 million mark a week earlier (18 December 2025), 19.5 million the previous Sunday (14 December 2025), and 19 million less than a week before that (9 December).
I 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 the 12 months since then, another 11.5 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 last month alone, four were last January, and one was this month:
• 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)
• 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)
• 106,169 (16 January 2026)
• 100,291 (10 January 2025)
The latest figure of 22 million is all the more staggering as more half of those hits (11 million) have been within less than a year, since 12 February 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 about 50,000.
With this latest landmark figure of 22 million readers, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 22 million people look like?
• Where do we find 22 million people?
• What does £22 million, €22 million or $22 million mean?
• What would it buy? How far would it stretch? How much of a difference would that much make to people’s lives?
22 million metres is 22,000 km and 22 million sq metres is 22,000 sq km.
Israel is officially 22 million sq metres (22,000 sq km), but his figure usually includes the occupied Golan Heights (1,200 sq km) and East Jerusalem (64 sq km) yet excludes parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, so that the official figures is around 22,072 sq km.
The Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently announced Greece is creating two new marine parks in the Ionian and South Aegean Seas – one in the Ionian Sea and one in the Southern Cyclades. He said that these parks ‘will be among the largest marine protected areas in the entire Mediterranean’ and will allow Greece to reach its target of protecting 30 per cent of its territorial waters by 2030, much earlier than originally planned.
The extent of these parks exceeds the initial announcements in 2024, when Mitsotakis suggested marine parks covering a total area of 22,000 sq km – 14,000 sq km in the Ionian Sea and 8,000 sq km in the Southern Aegean.
Some calculations suggest the longest walkable road is 22,000 km long (22 million metres), from Cape Town in South Africa to Magdan in East Siberia in Russia. There are bridges across the way, but no boat or air journeys are required.
It would take 4,492 hours or 187 days to travel if you walked nonstop . If you take a more realistic pace and walk just eight hours a day, it will take you 561.5 days – about a year and a half – walking through 17 countries, six time zones, and experiencing all seasons and weathers along the way. Needless to say, no one has ever done it, and technically it would be illegal in many places.
It takes about 11 days and 11 hours to drive 22,000 km at an average speed of 80 km per hour.
Vienna Cammarota, an Italian grandmother in her 70s, set off from Venice on 26 April 2022 on an epic 22,000 km hike, following the route taken by the Italian explorer Marco Polo to Beijing 750 years ago. Her extraordinary journey was to promote peace, courage, and cultural exchange followed the ancient Silk Road route.
After more than 850 days, covering 22 million metres (22,000 km), Vienna Cammarota arrived in China with The Travels of Marco Polo in hand, and she reached Beijing on 27 September 2024.
Chris LaCivita, who co-managed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential election bid, has abandoned a high-profile lawsuit against the Daily Beast, 10 months after alleging the news outlet had defamed him in reporting on campaign expenditures. The Daily Beast has not retracted the story, has made no apology and has not made any cash payment to LaCivita, who quietly dropped his legal action olastn Friday (16 January 2026).
LaCivita’s lawsuit involved a series of reports from the Daily Beast that suggested he had ‘raked in’ huge payments, including a piece by the journalist Michael Isikoff that was headlined ‘Trump in Cash Crisis – As Campaign Chief’s $22m Pay Revealed’. LaCivita said the $22 million figure represented gross campaign advertising expenditures, not personal income. After initial correction demands from LaCivita’s legal team, the Daily Beast modified its reporting, reducing the claimed compensation to $19.2 million and clarifying that funds went to LaCivita’s consulting firm.
The Atlantic reported in November 2024 that Trump furiously questioned LaCivita about the figure while they were both on a campaign plane. Trump told LaCivita: ‘You should sue those bastards,’ and would later teasingly refer to him as ‘my $22 million man’.
Meanwhile, YouTube has agreed to pay Trump $22 million to settle his 2021 lawsuit, which he filed after YouTube suspended his account following the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021. Driving the news: In addition, YouTube will pay $2.5 million to the other plaintiffs on the case, which include the American Conservative Union and writer Naomi Wolf. According to the court filing, Trump’s $22 million gains will go into a trust to help fund his White House ballroom renovation project, which has an estimated $200 million price tag.
And 22 million minutes is almost 15,278 days or 41.8 years. In other words, if this blog was getting one hit a minute, it would take almost 42 years to reach this 22 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 700-900 people each day.
It is almost four years now since I retired from active parish ministry, but I think many of my priest-colleagues would 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 22 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.
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