(by Michelle Ruelle).
The Vatican on Monday
announced that American journalist Greg Burke, currently the
deputy director of the Vatican Press Office, will take over from
Father Federico Lombardi as director on August 1.
Burke, 56, began work at the Vatican's Secretariat of State
in 2012 as communications advisor.
He spent more than a decade as the Fox News Rome
correspondent, and prior to that he was the Rome correspondent
for Time Magazine.
Burke said he was moved by the nomination.
"The thing that moved me is that the pope today told me: I
thought a long time about this," Burke said.
"It highlights the importance of this role even more," he
said.
Spanish journalist Paloma Garcia Ovejero will be Burke's
deputy, the first woman in history to hold that position.
She is currently the Vatican correspondent for Spanish
broadcaster Cadena Cope.
Ovejero said she was surprised by the nomination but also
said it was "normal" for a woman to be named at the executive
level of the Vatican Press Office.
"Women were the first ones to discover the Resurrection,"
she said.
"And then there's her, Mary, our mother".
Lombardi, 73, had been director of the Holy See Press
Office, or Vatican spokesman, since July 2006.
Vatican Prefect for Communication Monsignor Dario Edoardo
Viganò announced the nominations and thanked Father Lombardi,
with whom he has worked for the past 10 years.
Viganò said Father Lombardi would leave a long legacy and
had imparted a particular style, which Viganò referred to as
"the ecclesiastical vision of events, keeping the various
feelings together".
"The Church isn't a monolithic experience but a multiform
one; therefore a wide view is necessary," he said.
UNICEF Italy spokesman Andrea Iacomini on Monday
congratulated Burke on his new position.
"I'm certain that he will put all of his professionalism
and above all sensitivity into this important position, in a
historic moment like the one in which we are now living in which
telling the dramatic experiences of children around the world
seems ever more complex and difficult," Iacomini said.
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