Sinéad O’Connor rips up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live - October 3rd, 1992

On this day in 1992, at the end of her performance on Saturday Night Live, Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor shocked the audience and viewers at home by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that reveals history one day at a time.
I'm Gabe Lousier, and in this episode, we're re examining

(00:20):
the time when a Grammy winning musician blew up her
own career for the sake of sending a message. The
day was Saturday, October three. At the end of her
performance on Saturday Night Live, Irish singer songwriter Said O'Connor

(00:45):
shocked the audience and viewers at home by tearing up
a photo of Pope John Paul the second. She later
explained that her actions were motivated by the desire to
quote face some very difficult truths. More specifically, the singer
wanted to shine a light on the rampant, systemic child
abuse that had long been ignored in her native country

(01:09):
and abroad. Earlier that week, O'Connor had caught the SNL
staff off guard when she decided her second performance of
the evening would not be a song from her latest album. Instead,
she chose to sing an acapella version of a Bob
Marley song called War. Most of the song's lyrics are

(01:30):
adapted from a speech delivered to the United Nations by
Hailey Selassie, a former emperor of Ethiopia and a sacred
figure in Rastafarianism. The speech and the song it inspired
call for world peace while also cautioning that there will
be war quote until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that

(01:52):
hold our brothers in subhuman bondage have been toppled. During
dress rehearsal, O'Connor all heard some of the lyrics to
directly mention child abuse, which she viewed as an example
of the subhuman bondage mentioned in Marley's song. When she
sang the final line, we have confidence in the victory

(02:13):
of good over evil, she held up a photo of
a starving child. This planned protest was approved by Lauren Michaels,
the creator and executive producer of SNL. It was even
arranged for the camera to zoom in on the photo
during the live performance, but when the moment came later
that night, O'Connor replaced the photo from rehearsal with a

(02:37):
photo of Pope John Paul the Second. She then proceeded
to tear the photo to pieces, and as she did so,
she said, quote fight the real enemy and then threw
the pieces toward the camera. The show's director made the
split second decision to leave the applause signs off, which

(02:58):
resulted in a complete, at least silent audience as the
show went to commercial. But over the next few days
the phones at NBC were anything but silent. Nearly a
thousand viewers reportedly called in to complain about their performance,
and in the end, O'Connor was banned for life, not
just from SNL but from the entire NBC network. But

(03:22):
SNL couldn't just ignore the incident, so at the next
week's show, guest host Joe Pesci confronted the controversy head on.
He held up the same photo of the pope, explaining
that he had taped it back together. Then he tore
up a different photo, one of O'Connor herself. He then

(03:42):
went on to say that if she had pulled the
stunt while he was hosting, he would have quote gave
her such a smack. Lauren Michaels had a more middle
of the road response. He described O'Connor's actions as quote
on a certain level of betrayal, but also a serious
expression of belief. In later years, Michael's would expand on

(04:06):
that idea, saying that quote to her, the church symbolized
everything that was bad about the way she grew up
in Ireland, and so she was making a strong political statement. However,
not everyone agreed with the singer's message, or at least
not the way she had chosen to express it. A
few weeks after the incident, O'Connor was set to perform

(04:29):
at a Bob Dylan tribute concert in Madison Square Garden,
but she was booed off the stage. For the rest
of the year and well into the next, O'Connor was
condemned and parodied by everyone from Madonna to the Anti
Defamation League. Despite all the outrage and the harm to
her career, O'Connor never apologized or expressed regret for her actions,

(04:53):
but she did put an end to the speculation years
later by giving a full account of the incident. She
revealed that the photo of the Pope had been taken
during his visit to Ireland in nineteen seventy nine. She
had kept it with her for years, waiting for the
right moment to destroy what she viewed as a symbol
of lies and abuse. Then, just before her appearance on SNL,

(05:19):
O'Connor read an account in an Irish newspaper about priests
who had abused children but faced no legal repercussions. That's
when she knew that the right moment had finally arrived.
O'Connor may have waited years to deliver her defiant message,
but it would be several years longer before most Americans

(05:40):
would understand the true target of her protest. In her youth,
O'Connor had spent eighteen months in a Magdalene asylum, a
Catholic institution meant to house troubled or promiscuous teenagers. The
numerous cases of child abuse that occurred at sites like
this were an open secret in Ireland for decades. In fact,

(06:02):
just one year after O'Connor's performance on Saturday Night Live,
a mass grave was discovered on the grounds of one
such asylum. In response, an investigation was launched by a
U N Committee for Children's Rights. By the early two thousands,
these abuses, and thousands of others like them, were finally

(06:23):
laid bare for the people of Ireland, the United States,
and the rest of the world to see. I'm Gabe
Louzier and hopefully you now know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If you're so inclined,
you can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
at t d i HC Show, and if you have

(06:46):
any comments or suggestions you'd like to share, you can
send them my way at this Day at i heart
media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again and tomorrow for another day in History class. For

(07:12):
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