BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The Vatican announced this week that Pope Benedict will be visiting the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz when he travels to Poland in late May. He will also visit the birthplace of John Paul II. It will be Benedict's second trip outside Italy since he was elected a year ago this coming Tuesday (April 18). We asked Vatican expert John Allen of the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER to help us assess the first year of Benedict's papacy.

Benedict came to the papacy with the reputation of a hard-line conservative. But in the year since, Allen says, some Catholic conservatives have been unpleasantly surprised.

JOHN ALLEN (Vatican Correspondent, NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER): I think one of the great ironies at the end of the first year is about the only people that you can find publicly critical of the pope at this stage are those who were most excited about his election one year ago and who are now worried that the man they thought they were electing is not the pope they got.

ABERNETHY: When Benedict appointed American William Levada to his old job as the Vatican's chief enforcer of doctrine, some conservatives complained that Levada had not opposed homosexuality enough when he was Archbishop of San Francisco. And although the Pope reaffirmed Vatican policy barring homosexuals from seminaries and the priesthood, some conservatives worried about enforcement.

Mr. ALLEN: The question is will there be the follow-through, you know, to make sure that people are towing the line? And I think there's concern in some constituencies that they are not yet seeing that. I'll tell you what one very prominent American neo-conservative Catholic told me off the record, which is, "You know, we thought we were electing a Ronald Reagan. We got stuck with Jimmy Carter."

ABERNETHY: Benedict has made it clear that he wants to continue John Paul's outreach to Eastern Orthodox Christians and to Jews. But regarding Islam and the policies of some Islamic governments and extremists, Benedict is impatient.