The work of the day ahead had already been agreed with the news desk, when an obliquely worded email dropped into my inbox.
It was 8.36am on Wednesday.
It came from the press office of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland – a denomination with congregations on both sides of the border.
There were three short paragraphs.
The first said the church would make a "significant announcement of public importance" that afternoon.
"While we are unable to share specific details beforehand, they will be presented at the news conference, which we hope you…will be able to attend," it said.
The details of the time and location were all that was added.
It immediately piqued my interest.
A quick phone call did not elicit any additional information, but I got the sense that this was big and that it concerned "safeguarding" – a phrase that has become synonymous with abuse.
I called the RTÉ news desk back to scrap the earlier plan for the day.
I did not know what the story was, but it sounded like one we ought to be at.
A 4pm press conference meant a tight turnaround for the Six One News.
We wanted to get ahead of the story by gathering relevant footage, but with no detail it was hard to know where to start.
We settled on taking pictures of the church’s ornate headquarters in the centre of Belfast – known as the Assembly Building.
Its gothic architecture, in the style of a Scottish baronial castle, includes nods to the all-island nature of the Presbyterian church.
Carved into the Scrabo stone are the coats of arms of towns and cities such as Bandon, Dundalk, Monaghan, Galway and Tralee.
Latest census figures show around 22,000 Presbyterians in the Irish Republic predominately in the border counties and Dublin.
The numbers in Northern Ireland stand at 316,000. It is a faith with significant reach, though obviously not all are church goers.
When we arrived for the press conference it quickly became apparent that a degree of news management was in play.
Journalists were told there was time for only three questions of other church leaders ahead of separate one-to-one interviews.
The assembled media was not happy and said as much. Then Dr Gribben walked in and stood behind a lectern.
The previous day he had represented the island’s Presbyterians at the inauguration of President Catherine Connolly – reading the gospel at the ceremony.
Now he announced that he was quitting a job that he had only taken up in June.
He is the first moderator in the 185-year history of the church to step down.
He told the room that an internal investigation and report had uncovered "serious and significant failings" in church safeguarding between 2009 and 2022.
"As a result of this people have been placed at risk.
"We are aware of a number of people who have been harmed, and we believe there may well be others as yet unknown to us," he said.
"We apologise unreservedly for this."
Dr Gribben was quitting not just because he was the Moderator and head of the Presbyterian Church, a role that’s re-elected every year.
For years he had been a senior figure in the church administration, described by one theologian as effectively the chief executive.
The safeguarding failings had happened on his watch.
No sooner had he dropped this bombshell than he was shepherded out of the room.
Journalists were full of questions; it was left to others to try and field them.
What was the nature of the abuse; how many victims had been affected; were children among them?
They simply did not know.
Safeguarding policies had been in place, but they had been a paper exercise.
Read more: PSNI in discussions with Presbyterian Church over safeguarding
There had been a failure to make mandatory referrals to statutory agencies like the police and social services; people who had come forward had not been believed; convicted offenders returning for worship had not been adequately monitored.
From what little information they held, those harmed appeared to number in the low single figures from three congregations, at least one of them in the Republic of Ireland.
But the reality was they had no handle on what they were dealing with and were promoting a phone line and email address for those affected to come forward.
As the journalists began to pack up and prepare to tell the story there was confusion about what exactly had been going on.
We were not clear on who had been harmed, how many of them there were, how they had been harmed, or by whom.
In the days that followed the Presbyterian Church continued to take bad press.
There had been a drip feed of newspaper stories in recent years and allegations of a toxic culture.
They included claims of bullying, abuse of power and concerns over the use of non-disclosure agreements in church disputes with ministers.
Much of all that was gone over again, though it is still unclear what, if anything, it has to do with the current crisis.
Then on Thursday the PSNI said it had been engaged in "ongoing discussions" with the Presbyterian Church to ensure proper disclosure mechanisms for potential victims who wished to come forward.
These discussions had started when concerns were raised by the church following the conviction of an individual in 2024 for child sexual offences.
That conviction appears to have been the trigger for the church to carry out its internal review.
The church is a registered charity in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland’s Charity Commission has requested a copy of its safeguarding report. The commission believes it contains an entirely new set of allegations, not previously raised.
The leadership of the Presbyterian Church finds itself under real pressure.
Former and serving ministers have gone public to criticise the lack of clarity in the moderator’s announcement.
There’s been a general disavowal of the idea that the church should be left to deal with a problem of its own making.
Safeguarding experts have said there must be an independent review which can command confidence and which will publish its findings.
There is a sense that there’s more to come in this story. The church has asked for people’s prayers.
It is going to need them.
