On October 3rd, 1992, Sinéad O’Connor made a career-defining statement where she destroyed a photo of Pope John Paul II on stage during her performance on SNL.
In her new memoir, Rememberings, O’Connor reflects on the stunt, illuminating the rationale behind the act.
Back in the ’90s, O’Connor said she had destroyed the photo of the Pope to protest the rampant sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church. Rememberings offers a profound insight into the childhood trauma that inspired the protest.
“My intention had always been to destroy my mother’s photo of the pope,” she writes via Rolling Stone. “It represented lies and liars and abuse. The type of people who kept these things were devils like my mother.”
O’Connor revealed that she, alongside her siblings, visited her mother’s home after her death and “took down from her bedroom wall the only photo she ever had up there, which was of Pope John Paul II.”
“It was taken when he visited Ireland in 1979,” O’Connor explains. “‘Young people of Ireland,’ he had said after making a show of kissing the ground at the Dublin airport like the flight had been overly frightening, ‘I love you.’
“What a load of claptrap. Nobody loved us. Not even God. Sure, even our mothers and fathers couldn’t stand us.”
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The act of tearing up a photo of the Pope was inspired by a 1978 performance from The Boomtown Rats on Top of the Pops, after their single ‘Rat Trap’ overtook Oliva Newton-John and John Travolta’s ‘Summer Nights’ and Bob Geldolf ripped up a photo of the pair.
“I know if I do this there’ll be war,” O’Connor said of the stunt. “But I don’t care. I know my Scripture. Nothing can touch me. I reject the world. Nobody can do a thing to me that hasn’t been done already. I can sing in the streets like I used to. It’s not like anyone will tear my throat out.”
O’Connor has no regrets about the act, “Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer,” she revealed.
“I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame. In fact, that’s why I chose the first song. “Success” was making a failure of my life. Because everyone was already calling me crazy for not acting like a pop star. For not worshipping fame. And I understand I’ve torn up the dreams of those around me. But those aren’t my dreams.”
Rememberings is out now. Rewatch Sinéad O’Connor’s SNL performance below.
