Sinéad O'Connor ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II on SNL in 1992
Sinéad O'Connor ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II on SNL in 1992
Sinéad O'Connor 1966-2023
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Context?
Of the picture? Or why it’s being posted about today?
Re: the picture - she was the musical guest (or host? Can’t remember) on SNL, and the protested/called out the pedophilia/abuse happening in the Catholic Church by ripping up a picture of the Pope on live TV. People got pisssssed and she got absolutely destroyed in the public eye. Turns out she was right. But it was never publicly addressed nor was she redeemed in any way in the public eye.
Re: why posted today - she died today. And is considered heroic for the above mentioned action so I would imagine OP was memorializing that moment on this the day of her death.
She led a sad life, after years of battling mental illness, she had lost custody of her son which sent her into a spiral and her son died last year from suicide, which turned her into a suicidal wreck. Her cause of death hasn't been announced but I'm assuming she took her own life
It's interesting that you ask that because that was the problem with her doing it in the first place- most people weren't yet aware of the depth of pedophilia scandals the Catholic church was embroiled in, so they just thought she was anti-Catholic. We should have known what she meant when she said, "fight the real enemy," but the news was just not that prominent, not in the U.S. anyway.
Please don't get me wrong, though. She absolutely did not deserve to have her life and career totally fucked because people didn't understand her message.
Most Catholics in the US were keenly aware of the abuse issues, it's just that they didn't talk about it openly, and the media was loathe to cover it for fear of being labeled anti-Catholic, as she was.
Source: My mother was a Catholic nun for 15 years before leaving the convent to marry my dad, also a devout Catholic. I was an altar boy, went to Catholic schools through High School, and grew up in the 80's and 90's. It was well known among the church and school communities which priests to steer clear of and why.
She ripped up a picture of the pope live on SNL, while performing one of her songs. It was a protest against all the child rape that the church has hidden. She basically got publicly destroyed for it. She became a pariah, and her career was ruined. It’s worth noting that she was Irish, and Ireland is mainly catholic.
Then a few months later, all the stories of the catholic rapes broke. All the kids (and former-kids-now-adults) started coming forward to say they had been molested by church leaders and the church had covered it up. People started coming forward with decades of stories. It was suddenly too much for the church to cover up. It was a big scandal.
But the damage to her career was already done, and she never got any kind of redemption. She basically went from being an A-list musician on the level of Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, to being completely unemployable overnight. And she never recovered from it even after everything she was protesting about was proven true. She died today.
Performing Bob Marley and the Whalers' song, War. Haunting performance, libs on here would call her a tankie for this song lol https://youtu.be/X0VpfiMcPPA
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