Sinad OConnor called the pope an enemy on SNL and was banned
In three deft motions, she ripped apart a photo of Pope John Paul II on live television and told viewers to “fight the real enemy.”
She threw the pieces to the floor, staring indignantly into the camera. The “Saturday Night Live” audience sat in stunned silence. The camera cut away.
Chaos ensued.
Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor sparked global outrage in 1992 when she, without informing the “Saturday Night Live” producers or her publicist, delivered her searing political message against the Catholic Church. Her protest came at the height of her music career and more than a decade before the church’s sexual abuse and coverups were widely acknowledged. The blowback — from media, Catholics, fellow artists, Americans — seemingly set her bright career ablaze. But not for O’Connor.
“Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest,” she wrote in her biography almost three decades later. “A lot of people say or think that tearing up the Pope’s photo derailed my career. That’s not how I feel about it. … It wasn’t derailed. It was re-railed.”
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O’Connor’s death, announced by her family in a statement on Wednesday, has resurfaced what can arguably be her most famous moment. The self-proclaimed “troublemaker,” who died at age 56, had a long history of defying expectations — down to her famous buzz-cut hairstyle.
She was already a global sensation by the early 1990s: Her single “Nothing Compares 2 U” topped charts and turned her into a superstar. She went on to earn multiple Grammy Award nominations, was the first woman to win video of the year at the MTV Video Music Awards and was named Rolling Stone’s Artist of the Year in 1991.
The mood was somber when O’Connor took the stage for “Saturday Night Live” on Oct. 3, 1992. In a white lace dress, with white candles twinkling near her, she delivered a heartfelt rendition of Bob Marley’s song “War” — an ode against racism and classism — by replacing some of the lyrics to call out child abuse. As she sang out the song’s last line — “We have confidence in the victory of good over evil” — she pulled out the photo of the pope, tore it into pieces and tossed it on the floor before delivering her infamous call to action.
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Silence, shock and fury followed.
“They think they’re just going to hear a musical guest. They’re not really prepared for this moment. … And it lingers‚” said Allyson McCabe, author of the book “Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters.”
But O’Connor, who grew up Catholic, always intended to be vocal against the wrongs she saw in the world, according to McCabe.
“Sinéad O’Connor survived an extremely difficult childhood,” McCabe said, referring to O’Connor’s fraught, physically abusive relationship with her mother. The photo that O’Connor tore onstage was actually a memento that belonged to her mother, from the pope’s 1979 visit to Ireland.
“She realized at that point she was at the height of her platform, the height of her ability to be heard,” McCabe said. “She was going to be on live television. And so I think she saw her moment, and she took it.”
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The demonstration wasn’t meant to be an attack on the faith or the man himself, McCabe said, but as O’Connor explained in subsequent interviews, a criticism of “lies, liars and abuse.”
O’Connor’s massive platform also drew massive criticism. “Everyone’s watching SNL by the millions,” McCabe said. In the fast-paced social media of today, the public bounces from one controversy to the next, but in 1992, O’Connor’s move dominated the public conversation for weeks, and arguably, for the remainder of her career.
O’Connor was attacked in news and tabloid headlines — New York Newsday: “No hair, no taste.” Critics piled up and steamrolled her records in Manhattan. At a sold-out Madison Square Garden tribute to Bob Dylan, angry shouts drove her off the stage. She was banned from NBC, and the network reported that it had received 496 calls reprimanding O’Connor’s actions. Actor Joe Pesci, SNL host in the weeks that followed, received laughter and applause after telling the audience that he “would’ve gave her such a smack” had he been at O’Connor’s show.
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“I would’ve grabbed her by her eyebrows,” he said, mocking her close-cropped hairstyle. Madonna said O’Connor’s actions went too far and mimicked O’Connor on SNL two months later.
O’Connor never backed down in the years since.
“It’s not the man, obviously — it’s the office and the symbol of the organization that he represents,” she said in an interview with Time. “In Ireland, we see our people are manifesting the highest incidence in Europe of child abuse. … They have been controlled by the church, the very people who authorized what was done to them, who gave permission for what was done to them.”
The backlash didn’t come without consequence. It was “incredibly isolating,” she told The Washington Post in 2020. “To have been treated like a mental case because of it. Offstage and on. In private and in public. Even in my bed.”
Still, it remained her proudest moment. “She always dug in, she never retreated,” McCabe said. “And she continued to speak on.”
After the SNL incident, O’Connor’s publicist told the artist: “I’m not going to be able to fix this for you,” McCabe recalled. “Sinéad’s response was: Good.”
Geoff Edgers and Harrison Smith contributed to this report.
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