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[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by NotFromHere
No being Pope is for life. You can't quit, you can't get fired. There is a "special" vote that the Cardinals can call for - but I can't remember if any Pope has ever been voted out for health reasons.

You can't get fired, but you can quit. Only we call it "abdicate," which is the term I will use in my next letter of resignation.

Like every other ecclesiastical dignity, the papal throne may also be resigned. The reasons which make it lawful for a bishop to abdicate his see, such as the necessity or utility of his particular church, or the salvation of his own soul, apply in a stronger manner to the one who governs the universal church. It is true that the Roman Pontiff has no superior on earth into whose hands he can resign his dignity, yet he himself by the papal power can dissolve the spiritual marriage between himself and the Roman Church. A papal Abdication made without cause may be illicit, but it is unquestionably valid, since there is no one who can prohibit it ecclesiastically and it contravenes no divine law. The papacy does not, like the episcopacy, imprint an indelible character on the soul, and hence by his voluntary Abdication the Pope is entirely stripped of all jurisdiction, just as by his voluntary acceptance of the election to the primacy he acquired it. All doubt as to the legitimacy of papal abdications and all disputes among canonists were put an end to by the decree of Pope Boniface VIII which was received into the Corpus Juris Canonici (Cap. Quoniam I, de renun., in 6). The Pontiff says:

Chevy Disclosure: The Catholic Encyclopedia . It goes on:

Church history furnishes a number of examples of papal abdications. Leaving aside the obscure case of Pope Marcellinus (296-308) adduced by Pezzani, and the still more doubtful resignation of Pope Liberius (352-366) which some historians have postulated in order to solve the perplexing position of Pope Felix II, we may proceed to unquestioned abdications. Pope Benedict IX (1033-44), who had long caused scandal to the Church by his disorderly life, freely renounced the pontificate and took the habit of a monk. He repented of his abdication and seized the papal throne again for a short time after the death of Pope Clement II, but he finally died in a private station. His immediate successor, Pope Gregory VI (1044-46) furnishes another example of papal Abdication. It was Gregory who had persuaded Benedict IX to resign the Chair of Peter, and to do so he had bestowed valuable possessions upon him. After Gregory had himself become Pope, this transaction was looked on by many as simoniacal; and although Gregory's intentions seem to have been of the best, yet it was deemed better that he too should abdicate the papal dignity, and he did so voluntarily.

The classic example of the resignation of a Pope is that of St. Celestine V (1294). before his election to the pontificate, he had been a simple hermit, and his sudden elevation found him unprepared and unfit for his exalted position. After five months of pontificate, he issued a solemn decree in which he declared that it was permissible for the Pope to abdicate, and then made an equally solemn renunciation of the papacy into the hands of the cardinals. He lived two years after his abdication in the practice of virtues which afterwards procured his canonization. Owing to the troubles which evil minded persons caused his successor, Boniface VIII, by their theories about the impossibility of a valid Abdication of the papal throne, Boniface issued the above-cited decree to put the matter at rest for all time. The latest instance of a papal resignation is that of Pope Gregory XII (1406-15). It was at the time of the Great Schism of the West, when two pretenders to the Chair of Peter disputed Gregory's right, and rent the faithful into three so-called "obediences". To put an end to the strife, the legitimate Pope Gregory renounced the pontificate at the General Council of Constance in 1415. It is well known that Pope Pius VII (1800-23), before setting out for Paris to crown Napoleon in 1804, had signed an abdication of the papal throne to take effect in case he were imprisoned in France (De Montor). Finally, a valid Abdication of the Pope must be a free act, hence a forced resignation of the papacy would be null and void, as more than one ecclesiastical decree has declared.

I lack any information to the contrary of the above.