TWENTY YEARS AFTER, WILL THE WORLD NOW UNDERSTAND WHY "NOTHING COMPARES TO YOU" STAR, Sinéad O'Connor TORE THE POPE'S PICTURES?

Sinead O'Connor tearing the picture of Pope John Paul II

We all know her as the singer who made worldwide fame with her cover for Prince's "Nothing compares to you" in 1990...but she vexed the catholic world when in 1992 she tore the picture of the pope into pieces in 1992 on a television show twelve years ago, october to be precise.

When asked why she tore the picture in 1992, the singer said:

It's not the man, obviously—it's the office and the symbol of the organization that he represents... In Ireland we see our people are manifesting the highest incidence in Europe of child abuse. This is a direct result of the fact that they're not in contact with their history as Irish people and the fact that in the schools, the priests have been beating the shit out of the children for years and sexually abusing them. This is the example that's been set for the people of Ireland. They have been controlled by the church, the very people who authorized what was done to them, who gave permission for what was done to them.

Recent discoveries of abuses in the catholic church have opened the eyes of the world to what people like Sinead had been talking about twenty years ago.

When asked about her own abuse history, here's what she had to say,

"Sexual and physical. Psychological. Spiritual. Emotional. Verbal. I went to school every day covered in bruises, boils, sties and face welts, you name it. Nobody ever said a bloody word or did a thing. Naturally I was very angered by the whole thing, and I had to find out why it happened... The thing that helped me most was the 12-step group, the Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families. My mother was a Valium addict. What happened to me is a direct result of what happened to my mother and what happened to her in her house and in school".

And about the particular picture she tore? Here's an insight she gave the irish magazine, Hot Press in 2010. 

"After 18 months, with the help of her father, O'Connor escaped from this brutal system. Very quickly, her voice carried her to stardom. Her former captors were the "enemy" O'Connor spoke of when, as a 25-year-old with a once-in-a-lifetime live television audience, she tore the picture of the Pope and exhorted her viewers to "fight" him. The picture she tore, in fact, had belonged to her abusive mother, then already dead. "The photo itself had been on my mother's bedroom wall since the day the fucker was enthroned in 1978,"