Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican

REUTERS

The Vatican has hired an American journalist from the Fox News Network and member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei to help improve its relations with the media, a senior Church source said on Saturday.

Greg Burke, Fox's Rome-based roving correspondent for Europe and the Middle East, will become a "senior communications adviser" to the Secretariat of State, the key department in the Vatican's central bureaucracy, reports Reuters.

Burke, 52, a native of St Louis Missouri, has been working for Fox for 10 years. Before that he worked for Time magazine in Rome. He has also written several books, one about an Italian football team.

The source said the Vatican was expected to announce the appointment soon.