Veteran reporter Giovanna Chirri was starting to doze off in the Vatican press room on a slow holiday when all of a sudden the Latin she learned in high school.
The reporter who was covering a routine ceremony by Pope Benedict XVI on Feb. 11, 2013, never expected what unfolded, or that her high school Latin would give her the scoop of a lifetime. Giovanna Chirri of the authoritative ANSA news agency was in a Vatican press room watching the event on closed-circuit TV when Benedict said calmly and in Latin that he would be retiring because he believed he was too old for the job. She recalls that she felt sick and that her leg began shaking violently as she phoned her Vatican sources to check that she had heard Benedict correctly.