How Sinéad O’Connor blew up her career by ripping the Pope on ‘SNL’

Sinéad O’Connor — who died Wednesday at the age of 56 — shocked the world when she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992.

The move, which unfolded on the Oct. 3 episode as she sang an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s once-banned song “War,” got her barred from NBC for life and booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert a few weeks later.

She initially said tearing up the photo was to protest the Catholic Church and “fight the real enemy” amid child sex abuse scandals, but the stunt had a much deeper meaning, which the singer detailed in her 2021 memoir, “Rememberings.”

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

O’Connor recalled visiting the home of her mother, Marie O’Grady, after her 1985 death and taking a photo of the pope off her wall — which she said was “the only photo she ever had up there.”

“I never knew when or where or how I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the right moment came,” she wrote.

O’Connor, who was raised Roman Catholic, said she never regretted tearing up the photograph, nor did she care about being ostracized.

“I come from a tradition of Irish artists where I am principally concerned with affecting my society,” O’Connor told the LA Times in 2012.

She added, “Artists are supposed to act as an emergency fire service when it comes to spiritual conflict — not preaching or telling people what to do but being a little light that tells us that there is a spirit world.”

O’Connor reportedly tore a page from another artist’s book for her “SNL” protest.

The photo-tearing stunt was seemingly inspired by Bob Geldof, who shredded a photo of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in 1978 while performing with the Boomtown Rats on “Top of the Pops.”

Geldof, now 71, was allegedly making a commentary on his band’s single, “Rat Trap,” pushing Newton-John and Travolta’s hit “Grease” song “Summer Nights” from the top spot after a seven-week reign.