Today in History: Sinead O'Connor rips up a picture of the Pope on live TV

I remember the day very well because I was at a retreat for Catholic kids where we were all involved in a religious field trip of sorts that consisted of some religious stuff and then mostly flirting with one-another. It was odd. Anyway, we were watching Saturday Night Live because that was still something people watched back then, and after her performance as the musical guest she said "We have confidence in good over evil..... fight the real enemy"

The year was 1992

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SNL has at times allowed certain controversial things on their show, but they were completely unaware that Sinead was going to do this. She had practiced in rehearsal to hold up a picture of children and her message was to be one of helping starving kids or something. She swapped out a picture with this one, a photo that had been on the wall of her mother's house since 1978.

The studio audience did not applaud but was extremely silent. According to staff members, it took some coaxing to get the audience to not react and several people in the crowd left early, which normally is not allowed.

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The following week Joe Pesci was the guest and he had the same picture (claimed it was THE picture that he taped back together) and stated "She's lucky it wasn't my show. Cause if it was my show, I would have gave her such a smack."

This performance on SNL would have a disastrous impact on O'Connor's career as she was boycotted and even booed at performances throughout the next year or so the most famous of which is a Bob Marley tribute show where she was booed so loudly it wasn't possible for her to start her song.

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Kris Kristofferson attempted to console Sinead but he also faced backlash for not realizing the mic in front of him could "hear him" and he referred to the crowd as "bastards."

Sinead attempted to justify her position in various interviews stating that she isn't against the pope, she is against the way that Catholics raise their children and is against child abuse etc but since she only had a few seconds on Saturday Night Live she needed to go for shock and awe. Although there certainly is some merit to that statement, it didn't matter as mob mentality had already taken root and she kind of just needed to go away for a while... and she did.

In 1997, during an interview with an Italian newspaper, O'Connor asked the Catholic Church for forgiveness.

I suppose today this sort of thing would seem relatively minor given the sort of stuff we see regularly on Youtube and what not. It seems people have to do something increasingly outrageous in order to even be noticed.

I kind of respect her for her convictions but disagree with her methods. Catholicism is still the largest religion in the world and to do something like that... well, what did you think was going to be the end result Sinead???

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Sadly, Sinead has had a rather troubled life since that fateful day. She has been married 3 times and jumps from religion to religion, attempting to spark controversy along the way. Most recently she changed her name to Shuhada' Sadaqat when she converted to Islam.

She went from being a Grammy-nominated artist demanding top-dollar for performances, to being a liability that very few venues were willing to book. It wasn't long before SNL started mocking her on their own show. For those of you that remember this... it was 25 years ago. Feel old yet? :P