Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard.Photo:NBC
NBC
Miley CyrusandBrittany Howardteamed up once again forSaturday Night Live.
Instead of singing one of her own songs, O’Connor opted for an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War” and asked the camera operators to slowly zoom in on her face while she sang.
Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard.
At the end of the song, she looked into the camera and said, “Fight the real enemy.” She then held up a picture of Pope John Paul II and tore it apart on live television as a response to the Catholic Church’s alleged cover-up of sexual abuse of children.
Her performance became infamous inSNL’s history and the part of her performance where she ripped up the pope’s pictures wasn’t shown in the episode’s reruns.
Speaking to PEOPLE in 2021, O’Connor said that she was “well aware there would be” backlash. “I understood it because we joke in Ireland or in Europe that Americans, they don’t think anything happened until it happened to them. So I totally understood. I didn’t blame anyone.”
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She wrote in her 2021 memoirRememberingsthat she didn’t regret her actions on the sketch show.
“A lot of people say or think that tearing up the pope’s photo derailed my career. That’s not how I feel about it,” she wrote. “I feel that having a number-one record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”
Sinèad O’Connor in 1992.Yvonne Hemsey/Getty
Yvonne Hemsey/Getty
In the 2025 documentaryLadies and Gentleman…50 Years of SNL Music, Lorne Michaels spoke about O’Connor’s actions. “There was a part of me that admired the bravery of what she’d done and also the absolute sincerity of it,” he said.
SNL50: The Anniversary Specialis airing live on NBC and streaming on Peacock.
source: people.com
