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.”

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