Burke stands down as Vatican spokesman

(ANSA) - Vatican City, December 31 - Greg Burke has stood down as Vatican spokesman and head of its press office amid a revamp of the Holy See's communications set-up, the Vatican said Monday.
    It said Pope Francis had accepted the sudden resignations of Burke and his deputy director, Paloma García Ovejero.
    The pope has named longtime communications official Alessandro Gisotti as interim head of the Vatican press office, it said.
    Gisotti was hitherto social media coordinator for the the Dicastery for Communication.
    Burke, 58,had been press office head and Vatican spokesman since August 2016, when Ovejero was also appointed.
    Burke had previously been senior communications adviser with the Vatican's Secretariat of State and formerly a correspondent for the Fox News Channel, and for Time Magazine, based in Rome.
    Burke announced his surprise resignation in a tweet.
    "At this time of transition in Vatican communications, we think it's best the Holy Father is completely free to assemble a new team," Burke wrote.
    He and Garcia both thanked the pope. "A stage is ending. Thank you for these two and a half years," Garcia tweeted.
    The pope recently overhauled the Vatican's media operations for the second time by ousting the longtime editor of Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano and naming a new director of editorial content for all Vatican media, Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli.
    The shake-up comes at a challenging time for Francis' papacy with sex abuse cover-up allegations reaching the highest echelons ahead of a February pow-wow with bishops on the issue.