Fox News Reporter Hired as Vatican Media Adviser

(Jeeeeeesssshhh!!! Tells you something about how these dudes operate! gd)

ROME — In an effort to shore up its communications strategy amid a widening leaks scandal in a troubled papacy, the Vatican has hired the Fox News correspondent in Rome as a senior communications adviser.

The correspondent, Greg Burke, 52, who has covered the Vatican for Fox since 2001, will leave the network to help improve and coordinate the Vatican’s various communications operations, Mr. Burke and the Vatican spokesman said.

Some Vatican watchers called the move a power play by media-savvy Americans — including Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York and the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops — inside a Vatican hierarchy run by Italians whose most frequent communications strategy is to accuse their critics of defamation.

Mr. Burke is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, and his hiring underscores the group’s role in the Vatican.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/world/europe/vatican-hires-fox-news-correspondent-as-media-adviser.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120625