#Sinead O’Connor on why she ripped up photo of pope on ‘SNL’

After years of speculation, Irish-English musician Sinead O’Connor has finally revealed her rationale behind her infamous incident as a “Saturday Night Live” host in which she destroyed a photo of the Pope. The “Trouble Of The World Singer” dropped the bombshell in her new memoir “Rememberings,” which was excerpted this week by Rolling Stone.

The event occurred in October 1992, when the “Troy” singer shredded a pic of Pope John Paul II on stage while hosting “SNL.” The stunt got the Grammy winner exiled from NBC for life and also booed offstage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert a few weeks later, Rolling Stone reported.

At the time O’Connor, now 54, said she had torn up the photo to protest sexual abuse of children by the Catholic church. However, she recently revealed that the story goes much deeper.

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

O’Connor said she visited her mother’s home after her death and “took down from her bedroom wall the only photo she ever had up there, which was of Pope John Paul II.”

The performer explained that “it was taken when he visited Ireland in 1979.” She recounted how the Pope had told the”‘young people of Ireland” that he loved them after making a show of kissing the ground at the Dublin airport as if the flight had been “overly frightening.”

“What a load of claptrap,” the preordained Catholic minister-turned-Muslim convert scoffed in the memoir. “Nobody loved us. Not even God. Sure, even our mothers and fathers couldn’t stand us.”

She said she kept it with her for years. “I never knew when or where or how I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the right moment came,” she said.

Prior to her “SNL” appearance, the Irish-English singer had been reading accounts in Irish newspapers about children abused by priests, who later got off scot-free.

The photo-ripping stunt itself was reportedly inspired by a 1978 incident when Bob Geldof tore up a photo of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta on “Top of the Pops.” The musician was reportedly furious because the duo’s record “Summer Nights” had topped the charts for seven weeks before his hit single “Rat Trap” finally bumped them off.

Almost 30 years on, O’Connor has no regrets over ripping the Pope on camera.

“Everyone wants a pop star, see?” she wrote. “But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame.”

This isn’t the only bombshell the “Black Boys On Mopeds” performer divulged in her memoir. O’Connor spilled the beans on a hellish incident in 1990, when deceased pop icon Prince allegedly threatened to beat the crap out of her in broad daylight, chasing her around his car early one morning on an LA freeway.