“This is me saving my life”

Mon, 26 Apr 1999 07:00:00 +0000

Siniad O'Connor is now the artist formerly known as Siniad O'Connor. From here on out, the Irish pop singer would like to be called Mother Bernadette Mary O'Connor. Speaking on Irish television station TV3, O'Connor announced Friday that she is entering a fringe Catholic sect. She claimed to have found religion and averted her own suicide by emigrating to the French pilgrim city of Lourdes and committing herself to the cloth. "This is me saving my life," she said on TV. "If I hadn't come here I would have killed myself."

The announcement -- following several incidents from a tempestuous personal life writ large in Ireland's press -- rings with irony. The 32-year-old Irish pop star, who hit with a version of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" in 1990, provoked Catholic ire in '93 when she tore up a picture of the Pope on "Saturday Night Live." And last year she played a foul-mouthed Virgin Mary in Neil Jordan's film adaptation of the Patrick McCabe novel "The Butcher Boy."

Salon.com > Niall McKay

“This is me saving my life”