Well yes, a Papal decree making it legal for a Pope to resign kind of fits, when those in power want you out...
Kind of weird that a Papal decree of God's will's OK for that kind of thing, but not for electing a successor --- kind of suggests an enormous lack of faith in God's ability to appoint the correct person for the job [Edit: or a tremendous lack of belief in the Pope being God's divine messenger on Earth], and one of those eminently faithless will become his next emissary on Earth. That's about as close to irony as cynicism can come. Irony tends to be a lot funnier...
Oh, and Fred, the favourites are a Ghanaian, a French Canadian and a Nigerian. It kind of suggests that Scola's going to get it... [Edit2: The Archbishop of Milan]