Why I’m Grateful Sinéad O’Connor Ripped Up A Picture of The Pope
On October 3, 1992, Sinéad O’Connor shocked the world by ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II during her performance on SNL. The audience were stunned, the director jumped off his chair, and 4,400 people called in to complain. People destroyed her CDs, she was mocked and ridiculed, and many predicted that her career was now over. But as I’ll get into, it was all completely worth it.
In 1985, on a cold and icy day, Marie O’Grady was driving through Ballybrack in South Dublin. Suddenly, she lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a bus. Tragically, she did not survive this accident. The physical pain she felt was now gone, but the emotional pain from this incident was now carried by her 18-year-old daughter, Sinéad O’Connor.
When visiting her mother’s home once again, Sinéad saw an all too familiar photo. Like many Irish homes at this time, her house contained a photo of Pope John Paul II. She did not know where and when, but she knew one day that she was going to destroy this picture.
According to Sinéad:
“My intention had always been to destroy my mother’s photo of the pope. It represented lies and liars and abuse.”
Sinéad loved her mother dearly, but she was physically and emotionally abusive towards her. As well as being violent, there was an incident where she made her live in the back garden 24/7 for two weeks. Sinéad thought that, through her marriage with her father, and the subsequent divorce, she had become an evil person.
She said:
“When I look at photos of the woman she was before she got married, she was a joyful, gleaming, happy young woman, and I feel something possessed her. It was the devil in her.”
The photo of John Paul II became a symbol of her mother’s abuse, and wider abuse associated with the Catholic Church and Irish society. She decided that one day, as a final act of closure, she would rip up this picture into pieces.
“I never knew when or where or how I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the right moment came. And with that in mind, I carefully brought it everywhere I lived from that day forward. Because nobody ever gave a sh*t about the children of Ireland.”
Four months after her mother died, Sinéad was signed to Chrysalis Records. And two years later, she released her debut album The Lion and the Cobra. The album provided her with a stepping stone to build upon, having reached number 36 in the US and her song Mandinka performed incredibly well on college radio across America.
It was in 1990 when Sinéad became a household name through the song Nothing Compares 2 U. Although the song was written by Prince, the lyrics particularly resonated with her, and she still carried a heavy heart having lost her mother five years earlier.
“Every time I sing that song I think of my mother. I never stop crying for my mother. I couldn’t face being in Ireland for 13 years because of it.”
Off the back of this hit, she was invited to perform on SNL in 1990 but turned this opportunity down. Hosting the show that night was Andrew Dice Clay, who was known for his offensive, and often misogynistic humour. But two years later, Sinéad would be asked to perform on the show once again.
This time around, she agreed. This was much to the relief of her label, who felt that her career was in a bit of a lull, and she needed some much-needed energy to promote her new album Am I Not Your Girl?
Daniel Glass, who worked as an executive for Sinéad’s label, said:
“She got booked on SNL. Sinéad was not getting a lot of love at the time — she was controversial, she hadn’t had a hit in a while.”
It’s important to note that this was before the internet. People’s access to new music consisted mainly of TV and radio, and performing on SNL would expose her music to millions of viewers at home.
This time round, Tim Robbins was the host and funnily enough, he was also trying to cause some controversy of his own. SNL is on the TV station NBC, which is owned by General Electric, and Robbins decided to rattle a few cages with his opening monologue.
Robbins said:
“General Electric is quite an amazing conglomerate. In fact, if you thought General Electric made mainly kitchen appliances and light bulbs, you’d be quite mistaken. General Electric actually makes a great deal of its profits making things like.. ..triggering devices.. for nuclear warheads.”
In fact, SNL considered themselves quite edgy at the time. The show itself contained a number of comedians and comic actors that would still be recognized today such as Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Adam Sandler.
As well as making fun of General Electric, another sketch made fun of the founding fathers, and the uncomfortable truth that they were slave owners. However, any possible edgy jokes or gags would be largely eclipsed by what happened later that night.
The first song Sinéad performed was Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home, a cover song from the country singer Johnny Mullins. Sinéad played alongside an orchestra and delivered a beautiful performance to rapturous applause. The feeling backstage was a sense of relief.
According to Daniel Glass:
“Anyway, first song, Steve Kingston and Brian Phillips — two of the most influential people in the world of alternative rock radio — look back at me and said, “We’re adding the record Monday.” Thumbs up. Everybody’s great. We’re breathing.”
For Sinéad’s second performance, she told Lorne Michaels during rehearsal that she was going to cover the Bob Marley song War, and asked if she could hold up a photo of a kid who had been killed by the cops. Michaels had no issue with this, and looked forward to seeing Sinéad’s second performance.
Sinéad took to the stage, and the orchestra was no longer there. The only instrument onstage is Sinéad’s voice, and she began her cover of War.
The opening verse reads:
“Until the philosophy which hold one race Superior and another Inferior Is finally And permanently discredited and abandoned Everywhere is war.”
When the song speaks about issues in Mozambique and Angola, Sinéad switched up the lyrics to say “child abuse yeah” repeatedly.
The final line is “We are confident In the victory of good over evil.” And over the word ‘evil’, Sinéad holds up a photo. But instead of a picture of the kid who had been killed by the cops, she is holding a picture of John Paul II. The very photo from her mother’s home.
And just like she promised herself many years ago, Sinéad tore up the photo into pieces, stared at the camera, and said “fight the real enemy!”
When director Dave Wilson witnessed this, he reportedly “literally jumped out of [his] chair.” He ordered the applause sign to be immediately turned off, and a stunned silence emanated from the room. There was neither cheering, nor was there any booing either. It was just a deafening silence of what had just happened.
Sinéad left the stage, and could not find anyone. Writing in her autobiography, she said:
“When I walk backstage, literally not a human being is in sight. All doors have closed. Everyone has vanished. Including my own manager, who locks himself in his room for three days and unplugs his phone.”
After she left the stage, Daniel Glass, said:
“I remember knocking on the door. I went in and she was talking to herself. Her hands were behind her back, she had her socks on and she was doing something between poetry and chanting. I didn’t know what to do. People were upset and we got blamed, as if we were complicit.”
And the strange thing was, this wasn’t the end of the show. There were two more sketches left. Tim Robbins performed a sketch involving an extremely friendly pimp, and people did not know whether or not to laugh.
Rob Schneider also performed in this sketch and said:
“Anyway, I was backstage in quick change (getting dressed for the next sketch) and I didn’t know anything had happened.
“I came out and during the next sketch, I just felt the audience had changed. My usual physical moves that got laughs fell silent. No sketches got laughs after that. And the rest of the night was eerily quiet.”
The backlash was immediate. It was common knowledge that SNL was performed at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. So when Sinéad left the building with her PA , she was approached by two men.
According to her memoir:
“Outside 30 Rock, two young men are waiting for me and they throw a load of eggs at us both. But what they don’t know is myself and Ciara are able to run a hundred meters in 11.3 seconds.”
Ciara and Sinéad were not running away, but running after these men. Like a Hollywood-style chase scene, these two men end up running down an alley with a dead end.
“All we say, laughing at them, is ‘Hey, don’t be throwing eggs at women.’ The two of them are so shocked at being chased and caught that they start laughing too, and it all ends very friendly.”
Rob Schneider spoke to Sinéad at the afterparty of the show, and Sinéad seemed quite relaxed. According to Schneider:
“I spent some time with her at the after party at the Tea Garden and she was gentle and lovely and didn’t seem to have a worry about anything. We laughed about a few things trying to understand each other’s accents and had a drink and she could not have been lovelier.”
The backlash would not be received until the next day. During that season of SNL, 12.7 million viewers watched each episode and had witnessed what Sinéad had done. The New York Daily News contained the headline ‘Holy Terror’ with a picture of Sinéad’s face.
NBC received more than 500 calls on Sunday and 400 more on Monday. The network received 4,400 calls in total. She also had numerous gigs canceled and was unsurprisingly banned from SNL for life.
The following week, Joe Pesci was hosting the show and addressed the elephant in the room. He said:
“There was an incident on the show last week. Sinéad O’Connor tore up a picture of the Pope. I thought that was wrong, so I asked somebody to paste it back together.”
He then held up an image of the Pope and said:
“There. I think that’s a lot better. Okay. Case closed. I mean, why should I let it bother me, right? It wasn’t my show, it was Tim Robbins’ show.”
Then Pesci said something that did not paint him in a very good light.
“But I’ll tell you one thing, she was very lucky it wasn’t my show. Cos if it was my show, I would’ve gave her such a smack.”
And believe it or not, this off-color remark was lapped up by the audience.
The National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations arranged a protest where Sinéad O’Connor’s CDs were publicly steamrolled. They encouraged people to send in their own Sinéad O’Connor CDs for demolition and for each CD they received they would donate $10 to charity. The organisation reportedly were supplied with more than 200.
A cheer went up when roughly 100 people gathered to watch Sinéad’s CDs destroyed just outside of the offices of Chrysalis Records on 1290 Sixth Avenue.
You would think that Madonna, who is no stranger to controversy, and has often been criticized for blasphemy, would be on Sinéad’s side. Instead, she said on Irish radio:
“I think there is a better way to present her ideas rather than ripping up an image that means a lot to other people. If she is against the Roman Catholic Church and she has a problem with them, I think she should talk about it.”
Two weeks after her SNL performance, Kris Kristofferson was performing at Madison Square Garden as part of the 30th Anniversary of Bob Dylan’s performance at the venue. Kristofferson spoke to the audience and said he had an “artist whose name has become synonymous with courage and integrity” and brought Sinéad on stage.
Facing the crowd, Sinéad was met with a chorus of boos and Kristofferson whispered to her “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” Her response was: “I’m not down.”
While Sinéad put on a brave face, she later described how painful this moment was for her. In an interview with Hotpress, she said:
“I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I’ve never heard a sound like it in my entire life. Half of the crowd were cheering and half were booing and there was this violent clash, this violent noise. It was the weirdest noise I’ve ever heard.
“And what it did, this terrible noise — it went directly to my stomach. It made me want to puke — so all the time, I was just trying not to puke. So when they said I was crying — I was not f*ckin’ crying. In fact, I was puking. And for two weeks afterwards I still felt like throwing up. Certainly, for the first four days, I felt very sick. That night is what aged me — the venom, the hatred. I had experienced that before in a different situation. That’s why I was so frightened.”
Part of the reason for the controversy is that not many people understood the point she was trying to make.
One article in The Washington Post thought that she was protesting against the church’s stance on abortion, an issue Sinéad was also very vocal on. Another article in the Irish Examiner also thought this too and said that
“Educated by Catholic nuns, O’Connor opposes Catholic teachings on abortion and marriage.”
Frank De Rosa, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Archdiocese said:
“It is a pity she embarrassed herself that way. She needs some professional help — and spiritual help wouldn’t hurt either.”
A big problem was that the abuse scandals surrounding the Catholic Church were not as well known as they are now, so it wasn’t crystal clear what point she was making to some people. There had been isolated cases, but Sinéad was suggesting that this was systemic.
According to Allyson McCabe, author of Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters:
“No one had gone before millions of TV viewers to suggest that the problem was widespread or systemic, or that the church had not only condoned it but also covered it up. Certainly, no one destroyed a photo of the pope to make those points.”
But whatever other celebrities, bishops, and journalists thought, there was one group of people who were incredibly grateful to Sinead. David Clohessy, a key early member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told Fortune Magazine:
“For the people who suffered the same abuse, and did not have the same platform as Sinéad, her actions meant a lot.
“We were all just deeply convinced that we would go to our graves without ever seeing any public acknowledgment of the horror and without any kind of validation whatsoever. That’s what made her words so very powerful.”
And for Sinéad, she had no regrets either. For many people, Sinéad had allegedly ‘ruined’ her career and could have gone on to so much more.
When asked if this moment destroyed her career, Sinéad responded and said:
“Yes, in a beautiful f*cking way. There was no doubt about who this bitch is. There was no more mistaking this woman for a pop star. But it was not derailing; people say, ‘Oh, you f*cked up your career’ but they’re talking about the career they had in mind for me. I f*cked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I f*cked up their career, not mine. It meant I had to make my living playing live, and I am born for live performance.”
And in the decades that followed, Sinéad would become vindicated through the countless scandals that were revealed about the Catholic Church. I was two years old when Sinéad ripped up the Pope, so have no first hand memories of this moment. But throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Sinéad was seen as a figure of fun and ridicule. It was not until my later teens and early 20’s that I realised just how vindicated she was about this moment. While celebrities often speak about causes they care about, Sinéad was willing to sacrifice everything for what she believed in.
In the aftermath of her death in 2023, Sinéad was celebrated for the courageous figure that she was. Writing for Euronews, the journalist David Mouriquand said:
“I’ll remember Sinéad O’Connor as a musician who deserved an apology she never got, a woman who sacrificed her mental-health and jeopardised her career in order to defy abuse and meaningfully speak out despite the likelihood of criticism. We need more artists like her.”
I was born into the Ireland Sinéad O’Connor railed against. I’m now living in the one she has left behind which, although has it’s problems, is a much better place. Sinéad, thank you.
Sources
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