Pope Benedict has stunned the Catholic Church and the world by announcing that he would resign from the See of Rome on February 28.
National Catholic Reporter Vatican senior correspondent and papal biographer John Allen assesses the highs and lows of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy in an article on the National Catholic Reporter website.
Allen reviews Benedict’s successes, among which were his teaching, his public speeches and writing and his foreign visits. Among the controversies of his pontificate were relations with Islam, the ongoing clerical sex-abuse scandal, the lifting of the excommunication of a holocaust-denying bishop and the Vatileaks affair.

http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/pope-benedict-leaves-behind-legacy-full-ups-and-downs