Fox News reporter joins Vatican press corps

Journalist hired for new Holy See post of senior communications adviser

Greg Burke, former Fox correspondent in Rome, will work in the Vatican's Secretariat of State. (CNS)

Carol Glatz of Catholic News Service reports that the Vatican has hired a layman to communicate the Church's message to major media outlets.

Burke, a native of St. Louis, said he'll make sure everyone at the Vatican "stays on message." He has spent the past 24 years based in Rome as a journalist, the last decade with Fox News.

A good example of a past media storm that could have been avoided was during Pope Benedict XVI's speech on Islam in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006. The Holy Father quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor, who said the prophet Mohammed had brought "things only evil and inhuman."

There might have been no problem, but as a talk televised to the world, "in a sound-bite, headline culture, it's a whole different thing," Burke pointed out.

Despite the Vatican's communication challenges, he said the Church "still has a great message" that needs to get out there. "It's a message of spread the love, which often gets lost in a lot of the static."

Read the full story here.