Sinéad O'Connor destroyed a picture of the pope on 'SNL' and was banned from NBC. Years later, people realized how right she was.

Sinéad O'Connor destroyed a picture of the pope on 'SNL' and was banned from NBC. Years later, people realized how right she was.

Singer Sinead O'Connor rips up a picture of Pope John Paul II October 3, 1992, on "Saturday Night Live". Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images

Singer Sinead O'Connor rips up a picture of Pope John Paul II October 3, 1992, on "Saturday Night Live". Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images

Sinéad O'Connor has died at age 56, her family confirmed.

In 1992, O'Connor was blacklisted after ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II during an  "SNL" appearance.

O'Connor aimed to shed light on the Catholic Church's history of abuse before it was widely accepted.

Sinéad O'Connor's family confirmed on Wednesday that the Grammy Award-winning singer had died at age 56.  O'Connor rose to international stardom with her breakthrough hit cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U," but it was her controversial 1992 appearance on "Saturday Night Live" that made her a household name. 

In the now-infamous performance, O'Connor sings a slightly altered a cappella rendition of Bob Marley's song "War," which condemns the racism experienced by Black people worldwide. However, O'Connor used the song to protest the rampant abuse in the Catholic Church, which she later said in her memoir was going unnoticed at the time.

To prove her point, O'Connor held up a photo of Pope John Paul II while singing the word "evil," and then proceeded to rip up the picture and throw the pieces at the camera after she was done singing.

"Fight the real enemy," O'Connor said directly to the camera as audience members in the studio maintained a stunned silence. 

Amid news of her death on Wednesday, the clip of O'Connor's "Saturday Night Live" performance was reshared extensively on Twitter. 

—matt (@mattxiv) July 26, 2023

O'Connor faced significant backlash and was banned from 'SNL' after the performance

In her 2021 memoir "Rememberings," O'Connor revealed that she was banned from NBC for life after the incident, but said being blacklisted hurt "a lot less than rapes hurt those Irish children." 

As Insider's Claudia Willen reported, however, the fallout against O'Connor didn't stop there. The singer and her assistant were pelted with eggs outside of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York (where "Saturday Night Live" is filmed) following the controversial performance, and other celebrities, including Joe Pesci and Madonna, later ridiculed her. 

According to an excerpt from O'Connor's memoir published by Rolling Stone in 2021, the photo of the Pope that she tore up on "SNL" belonged to her mother, who O'Connor said in her memoir was also abusive.

"My intention had always been to destroy my mother's photo of the pope. It represented lies and liars and abuse. The type of people who kept these things were devils like my mother," O'Connor wrote. 

The singer later said she didn't regret calling out the Catholic Church

Sinéad O'Connor in 2011. Hayley Madden/Getty Images

"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," O'Connor wrote in her memoir, per Rolling Stone.

"I feel that having a number-one record derailed my career, and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track." 

According to the singer, she "wasn't born to be a pop star." 

O'Connor doubled down on her comments in several 2021 interviews, telling the New York Times that the move was both "brilliant" and "traumatizing." She also told Carson Daly on "Today:" "Ten years after the pope ripping episode, you all then found out in America that this was going on. We always say Americans, they think nothing happened until they found out about it."

"It was a blessing because I had to make my living doing the thing I loved doing, which is making music live," O'Connor told "Today."

In 2001, a decade after O'Connor's "SNL" appearance, Pope John Paul II  apologized for rampant sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

But a 461-page report released by the Vatican in 2020, revealed that both Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, had knowledge of abusive priests but refused to take the accusations seriously for decades.

O'Connor is survived by three of her children. Her son Shane died by suicide at the age of 17 in 2022.