In recent days, sad news broke about the death of famous Irish singer, Sinead O’Connor at just age 56, just 18 months after her 17-year-old son tragically took his own life.  Sinead O’Connor was one of the many musicians that I grew up with and her classic piece ‘Nothing Compares To You’ remains timeless and still evokes many memories even today.

However, despite Sinead being brought up Catholic, she later converted to Islam and it is assumed that she died as a Muslim.  This is just heartbreaking.  However, what made Sinead convert to Islam.

Over the years, Sinead has had a very tough life, full of pain, abuse, trauma and betrayal, right from her child. Born into a Roman Catholic family in Glenageary, County Dublin, her parents ended in divorce and O’Connor was sent to live with her mother, Marie, who regularly abused her, psychologically, physically, and sexually.

She managed to run away at 13 to live with her father. Life was more stable there but her mother encouraged her to steal and she became addicted to shoplifting. As a result, she ended up getting caught and was sent to a religious institution sponsored by the Catholic church, Magdalene asylum, for women with behavioural problems in Dublin for 18 months when she was just 15, where she was further abused and tortured.  Thankfully, there was a kind nun at the institution who gave her a guitar, igniting her love for music and giving the world one of the most talented Irish musicians we have seen in a long time.

It is hardly surprising then that Sinead was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress syndrome and borderline personality disorder, as a child.

Despite enduring all of this, O’Connor claimed that she had been able to forgive her mother, who died in a car accident in 1985

In 1992, she appeared on Saturday Night Live and infamously ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II on camera after learning about the ways in which the church was covering up the sexual abuse of children.  She has since been proven right – the church has historically failed children and families by covering up sexual abuse.

Embroiled in lengthy custody battles with John Waters, the father of her second child, daughter Rosin, and facing accusations that she was an unfit mother, she tried to take her own life in 1999

She survived and threw herself into motherhood and religion. That same year she became an ordained priest of the Latin Tridentine Church, taking the name Mother Bernadette Mary and earning an archdeacon title for her work with Dublin’s homeless.

Unfortunately, she still wasn’t healed from her childhood trauma and abuse, and in her search for peace, she converted to Islam in 2018, adopting the name Shuhada’ Sadaqat. She said at the time: “Christianity lied to me as an Irish person. Christianity did nothing but rape the people of Ireland, metaphorically and literally. That’s why I like Islam. Because I can take the things I embraced with me. Jesus is still there but it’s the Jesus that makes sense to me.”

Sadly, in  January 2022 her family was struck by tragedy when her 17-year-old son Shane was found dead. The mum-of-four described him as being “the love of her life” in one of her final social media posts.

One week later, she was hospitalized after posting a lengthy message on Twitter earlier that day saying she had “decided to follow her son.”

In a follow-up tweet she apologized, writing, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I am with cops now on way to hospital.”

She continued, “I’m sorry I upset everyone. I am lost without my kid and I hate myself. Hospital will help a while. But I’m going to find Shane. This is just a delay.”

And then 18 months following his death, Sinead is found dead.  It is unclear whether or she committed suicide and my heart really breaks for her.  Not just for the childhood abuse she endured and all her struggles, including feeling betrayed by the Catholic Church for its inaction over abuse, but for the fact that in her desperate bid to find peace and overcome her trauma, she left the Catholic church, running straight into the arms of the enemy, Islam.  But even that was not enough to bring her peace either.  My heart really cries for her soul and  I believe that the Catholic church does have a lot to answer for – not just in betraying victims of abuse, but through its inaction, driving them into the arms of the enemy and essentially damning their souls.

Thankfully, more priests and church officials are now getting educated about abuse and finally starting to take action on abuse cases, but more needs to be done. At least two souls, Sinead and her son, could have been saved if the Church was more proactive in its stance against abuse.

And this is why I do the work that I do…..not just in teaching about Traditional Catholicism, femininity, womanhood and Biblical teaching, but especially in the teaching of abuse and narcissism.  This is why I focus so heavily on narcissism and narcissistic abuse – every form of abuse is narcissistic.

Perhaps if Sinead was educated on narcissism, she would have been able to deal with her trauma better and understood, the problem is not the church per se; it is a handful of diabolical people that have infiltrated the church.  She might have been able to find peace and comfort in God, rather than just the Church, and more importantly, learned about boundaries, standards and No Contact to protect herself from other narcissistic abusive people in her adult life.

While I do not agree with the way she decided to expose the abuse, ie by disrespecting the pope publicly, I do agree with her that abuse should be exposed.  However, there are better ways to expose abuse in an institution and get justice than ripping up a picture of the pope.

Sinead’s case is all too common for people who have endured abuse – be it childhood abuse or abuse in adult life via marriages – and when you do not understand the very real spiritual warfare that is being waged every day for your soul, it can be easy to think the entire Church is bad (which is what the devil wants you to think), and to become discouraged, to leave the church and even go into the enemy’s camp by joining another religion, which only brings more pain, suffering and the loss of your immortal soul.

If you are going through any form of abuse, such as family abuse or marital abuse, or if you endured abuse in your childhood at the hands of your family or church officials, I beg you, please do not leave the Church – do not abandon Jesus simply because of the handful of Judas’ in the Church. It is said that the best place for evil to hide behind is good, so it should come as no surprise that evil abusive people exist in the Church – it still doesn’t make the entire Church wrong.

God loves you so very much.  You can continue to trust in Him and in His Church, while offering up your sufferings, and setting boundaries with abusive people in your life and/or going No Contact.

May our Lady of Perpetual Succour bring you peace and comfort and may the soul of Sinead O’Connor find repose.

 

MORE RESOURCES

ad Jesum per Mariam

🌹🙏🌹