Reviewing this past year in the Vatican

(Vatican Radio) 2012 has drawn to a close and it's traditionally the time to take stock and look back at the past 12 months to revisit some of the main events and highlights of the year for Pope Benedict and the Vatican. John Allen is senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter in the U.S. and is one of the world's best known commentators on Vatican and Church affairs. Vatican Radio's Susy Hodges asked him for his take on how 2012 has been for the Pope.

Listen to the extended interview with John Allen:

Allen says there is always plenty of drama and newsworthy events within the Vatican and the past year was no exception. "Being Pope you never have a dull year and 2012 was proof of that."

Among the main events and highlights of the past year, Allen points to the Pope's "extraordinarily successful trip" to Lebanon, the launch of his Twitter account, the Synod of Bishops for the New Evangelisation and the "painful and embarassing" Vatileaks scandal. He says the papal visit to Lebanon was used to express "solidarity and support" for the "imperilled" Christian communities throughout the Middle East and although seen as "a very challenging trip" beforehand it went off remarkably well.

Commenting on Pope Benedict's Twitter debut, Allen says the Pope "is trying to set an example for evangelisers everywhere" within the Church to use all the modern communications tools at their disposal. Similarly, the Synod of Bishops this October was trying "to re-ignite the missionary fires of the Church" in the modern age.

When asked how damaging he believed the Vatileaks scandal was, Allen says although this event was "painful and embarassing" the flipside is that "scandal tends to breed reform. "In 2012," he continues, "we saw Pope Benedict moving the ball in important ways towards greater financial transparency and accountability, in particular inside the Vatican itself. As he sees it, the Vatileaks scandal "created and added to the momentum for a kind of financial glasnost within the Holy See which Benedict XVI has been trying to engineer."

The end of 2012 saw the publication of Pope Benedict's third book in his Jesus of Narareth series and Allen says these books are further evidence that the Pope's "real passion is in the teaching dimension" of his office: "I think in the long run of history, he's going to be remembered as a great teaching Pope."