The Vatican Takes on ‘pettiness and Lies’

By Andrew Rosenthal
New York Times
June 26, 2012

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/the-vatican-takes-on-pettiness-and-lies/

The Roman Catholic Church has been getting a lot of press lately, much of it negative: The priest sex abuse scandal won’t go away (on Friday, a former cardinal’s aide was convicted of covering up sexual abuse by priests under his supervision); the pope’s butler leaked private documents alleging corruption in Vatican finances (he was then arrested); and church leaders are cracking down on nuns for daring to buck doctrine.

So the Vatican has done what all powerful institutions do in this sort of a situation – it’s hired a new press consultant. Because none of these cases reflects an actual problem. (As the pope’s right-hand man, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, put it last week, the media are guilty of “pettiness and lies.”) It’s all just a matter of getting the message right and getting it out there more efficiently.

This job, which has to be the last prize in the 2012 public relations career lottery, is going to Greg Burke, a 52-year-old correspondent for Fox News who has covered the Vatican since 2001. Much is being made of the fact that Mr. Burke is the first person hired to work on the Vatican’s public relations who came from outside the Catholic news agencies, although he is a numerary of the Opus Dei movement, which means that he is celibate and gives the church most of his income.

Mr. Burke will not be the spokesman for the Vatican. His job will be “to formulate the message and try to make sure everyone remains on message.” Asked how he would handle something like the pope’s decision to reinstate a schismatic, Holocaust-denying bishop, he said: “I think at that point you say, ‘We have a train wreck coming here.’”

Mr. Burke added: “I don’t have an answer for you on how I’d stop the train, but I’d try.”