CNN —Following the announcement of Sinéad O’Connor’s death aged 56 Wednesday, her life and music with all their complexities and convulsions have been put back into the spotlight. At first, the act drew widespread condemnation, but in subsequent years this eventually gave way to admiration as the Catholic Church acknowledged and apologized for the sexual abuse perpetrated by members of the clergy, often toward children. Ripping up that photo of the pope defined her career in a “beautiful f**king way,” she told the Guardian in 2021. Joe Pesci hosted the show the following week and in his opening monologue said that O’Connor “was very lucky it wasn’t my show. As the years passed, however, the public’s stance toward O’Connor softened as sexual abuse by members of the clergy became a matter of record.

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Persons: Sinéad, Pope John Paul II, Bob Marley’s, ” O’Connor, John Paul II, “, O’Connor, ”, O'Connor, Stringer, Bob Dylan, Joe Pesci, she’s, Joey Buttafuoco, Amy Fisher, Pope Benedict XVI, O’Connor’s, Aisling Bea, sayer, Morrisey Organizations: CNN, Catholic Church, Rolling Stone, SNL, Guardian, Defamation League, Smiths Locations: Irish, United States, London, Antigua, Australia, Ireland