It is the moment that for many definedSinéad O’Connor.

In 1992, the Irish singer took the stage at “Saturday Night Live” to sing Bob Marley’s “War.” Her a cappella rendition exposed every fluid bend, every wailing undercurrent in her voice, turning the already powerful song into a haunting new version. With her head shaved and wearing a long, white lace dress, she was a starkly beautiful, fierce warrior spirit, hardened by anger but animated by the music emanating from her.

Then while singing the lyrics, “good over evil,” she pulled out a photo of Pope John Paul II and tore it apart three times and tossed the pieces in the air, then proclaimed: “Fight the real enemy.”

The audience responded with total silence.

She later confirmed that the performance and destruction of the photo was meant as a statement against the sexual violence against children perpetrated by members of the Catholic Church.

The reaction was swift. NBC, the show’s network, received 4,400 calls about the performance, and she was banned from appearing on the program again, with her performance cut for the West Coast airing and subsequent broadcasts. O’Connor was condemned as anti-Catholic by many for her statements, although she had been raised Catholic and her mother, whom O’Connor accused of abusing her as a child, kept the same papal portrait on her wall, as she disclosed in her 2021 memoir, “Rememberings.” The photo showed the pontiff with his arms raised in the air, red capelet lifted by the wind behind him.

After that TV appearance, she went from the height of her fame to being booed onstage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert days later, and being threatened with violence by the likes of Catholic celebrities Joe Pesci and Frank Sinatra. Even Madonna said she disapproved of her actions.

Nearly a decade later, when the epidemic of child abusers in the priesthood was exposed — plus cover-ups by the Catholic Church in the United States, Europe and O’Connor’s native Ireland — she was proved correct. In early 2000, Pope John Paul II even apologized for the church’s actions to victims.

But by that point, the damage to O’Connor had been done.

It’s never easy being a Cassandra, and O’Connor’s rise and rapid fall from pop-culture grace demonstrate that almost too neatly.

O’Connor never really took a victory lap amid all the disclosures about the church, because what victory was it, really? The abuse happened, and O’Connor was punished for speaking about it. Those facts wouldn’t change.

The 2022 documentary about her life titled “Nothing Compares” and “Rememberings,” are about as close as she got to saying, “I told you so.” In the latter, O’Connor wrote that “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career, and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”

Her later years were hard. In 2018, she continued to struggle with issues of religion and converted to Islam, changing her name to Shuhada’ Sadaqat in 2018, but still using O’Connor professionally. In addition to a range of mental health conditions, O’Connor lost her son Shane Lunny at age 17 to suicide in 2022.

她最后推周三在她去世前,July 26, said that she had been “living as an undead night creature” since her son’s death and that they were “one soul in two halves. … I am lost in the bardo without him.”

We punish people who speak against big institutions, especially religious ones. We punish women who talk out of turn. We punish artists who go against commercialism to make controversial statements. O’Connor was punished for all those reasons.

A cause of death for the singer has not yet been released, but one hopes that with all the exposure of crimes by the church in the 21st century that there at least came peace for O’Connor in the end.

Her life was complicated, and her work as an artist was too. Should she be defined by this one performance and statement? No. But she should be given credit for speaking a horrible truth at a time when few others were brave enough to do so.

Correction:The original version of this story misstated the date of Sinéad O’Connor's death. She died on Wednesday, July 26.

Reach Tony Bravo: tbravo@sfchronicle.com