October 3, 1992: Sinead O’Connor appeared on Saturday Night Live singing an acapella cover of Bob Marley’s song “War”, changing some of the lyrics to include references to child abuse, and ending the performance by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paull II and saying “fight the real enemy”.
Just reblogging this again because I just found out that Sinéad O’Connor was put in a Magdalene Laundry at the age of 14 and holy shit that adds an awful lot of context for this
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/sinead-oconnor-magdalene-laundry
She told the paper: “We were girls in there, not women, just children really. And the girls in there cried every day.
“It was a prison. We didn’t see our families, we were locked in, cut off from life, deprived of a normal childhood.
“We were told we were there because we were bad people. Some of the girls had been raped at home and not believed.
“One girl was in because she had a bad hip and her family didn’t know what to do with her. It was a great grief to us.”
The rock star explained how her 18 months in High Park in the Drumcondra suburb of Dublin left her so angry at the injustice that it was part of the reason she caused worldwide controversy by tearing up a picture of the Pope on live television.
She added: “It wasn’t the only reason, but it was one of them.”
Lashing out at the Church’s ‘flaccid’ apology, O’Connor said she was ‘disgusted’ by it.
The mother-of-four said: “They said something like, ‘We’re sorry for the hurt.’
“The word hurt doesn’t cover it. I am disgusted that the State won’t apologize. I’m disgusted at the tone of the Church’s flaccid apology. The Church is getting away with it again.”
if it happened at all, it happened like that 