Sinead O’Connor: ‘The Vatican is a nest of devils’
You can’t mistake Sinead O’Connor’s house. Outside the porch is an empty plant pot full of cigarette butts, inside are two large statues of the virgin Mary. As the door opens, I crash into another Virgin Mary. O’Connor’s housekeeper, who doubles up as her best friend, opens the door and leads me into a lounge where family photos, rocking chairs and kids’ paintings jostle for pole position with more Virgin Marys. A huge beautiful bay window overlooks the sea at Bray, just outside Dublin.
When O’Connor arrives, I barely recognise her. Her hair is a black bob, her face rounded, she is wearing a three-piece suit and has the air of a mid-20th century industrialist. A big brass cross hangs down her front. “That’s my ordination cross. Normally I tuck it into my bra,” which she does as she speaks. She suggests we retire to the shed-cum-office in the garden. So we stroll past the hanging linen, a few guitar cases, two Yorkshire terrier puppies, the cat, and she chats away confidently, and we reach the wooden hut and shut the door on the world. Then everything changes. She sits down, just about manages to light a fag with a shaking hand and morphs into the terrified (and terrifying) wisp of a girl from yesteryear.
In 1992 she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on the American TV show Saturday Night live. She said it was a protest at child sex abuse in the Catholic church, and many people thought she was loopy. What abuse? Two weeks later she was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert, her records were publicly smashed, and that was pretty much that as a pop star.
Eighteen years on, she has been vindicated. In March, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apology to the victims of decades of sex abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland, expressing his “shame and remorse” for the “sinful and criminal acts”. But O’Connor is still boiling – she regards the Vatican’s admission as more cover-up than confession.