The One Who Understood

45-sec read

Have you ever been in one of those meetings where something important gets announced, but only one person in the room seems to understand what just happened?

In 2013, when Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, he did it in Latin. Very few people in the room immediately grasped the weight of what he had just said.

There were cardinals, reporters, and senior officials all politely listening to the Pope quit his job, without realising he had quit his job.

This mattered a lot because a pope had not resigned in almost 600 years.

The first journalist to break the story was Giovanna Chirri, who had studied Latin. Not because she expected a Pope to resign in it, but because she thought she should know the language of the institution she covered.

So when the moment arrived, she didn’t have to wait for someone else to explain it.

She was ready.

The ol’ folks will tell you that most preparation looks like that. You never know when it will matter, only that at some point it will.