Pope Francis a hit with the crowds in Vatican tourism surge

Pope Francis is proving to be a major tourist attraction, as figures published by the Vatican show 6.6 million people visited the city-state between March and December.

That represents an almost three-fold increase in the number of people who visited the city in all of 2012, the last full year of Pope Benedict's tenure.

The Vatican also said the figures don't include the massive crowds who turned out to see the new Pope during his travels, which included three million people at an open-air Mass in Brazil.