VATICAN CITY — The Vatican has brought in the Fox News correspondent in Rome to help improve its communications strategy as it tries to cope with years of communications blunders and one of its most serious scandals in decades, officials said.

Greg Burke, 52, will leave Fox to become the senior communications adviser in the Vatican's secretariat of state. Burke defined his job as being along the lines of the White House senior communications adviser: “You're shaping the message, you're molding the message, and you're trying to make sure everyone remains on-message.”

Burke is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement. Pope John Paul II's longtime spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, was also a member of Opus Dei and was known for the papal access he enjoyed and his ability to craft the messages John Paul wanted to get out.

The Vatican has been bedeviled by communications blunders since Pope Benedict's 2005 election, and is dealing with a scandal over documents that were leaked to Italian journalists.