MOTHER BERNADETTE

"Roisin Ingle wonders whether it will all end in tears as 'Sinead, I mean
Bernadette' O'Connor talks to her from her hideaway near Lourdes about her
mission from God"

Something the newly ordained Sinead O'Connor said this week when asked for 
her reaction to the widespread view that she was several wafers short of a 
Mass, should go some way to easing the conscience of journalists (some of 
us have one, you know) who may for whatever reason not be entirely
comfortable commenting on this rather bizarre situation.

She spoke down the phone, from the place she had "escaped" to from Lourdes,
and said impatiently "place your index fingertip against the tip of your
thumb. Do it now. Are you pressing them together?" As though humouring a
small child one obeyed, the left hand holding the phone, the relevant
digits of the other forming a clumsily shaped but clearly visible zero.
Then that restless, middle-class Dublin voice again. "Look at it. Do you
see it? That's how much I care about what anyone says about me anymore. Do
you understand?" Imperfectly, Sinead.

She said a lot that day, on the phone from she-wouldn't-say-where and then
later, expanding upon her points into an answering machine as though it
were a listening ear. She had said a lot to Marian Finucane two days
before. People who heard her proclamations live on radio that she was going
to save the Catholic Church - ranting on "as though she were some kind of
second coming", they would later remark to each other during their coffee
break - smirked and muttered "God love her, what will she do next?" Others,
like Pat Kenny were disturbed by the fact that her ordination had made the
headlines on that mornings news. "I just feel sorry for her," he concluded.
For him, at least, the subject of Mother Bernadette Mary O'Connor was
closed. Perhaps that is the most appropriate reaction, indeed her family
has kept a typically dignified silence. Unfortunately for anyone close to
her and due in no small part to her own clever use of the media, this
dramatic leap of faith is proving almost impossible to ignore. As one of
our most talented, successful and prolific exports, Sinead the celebrity
fascinates the general public as much as Sinead the singer. Whether that
acute fascination justifies the extensive coverage this and other
newspapers continue to afford the story is another question.

But people are interested and as dubious proof, her latest career move was
discussed on Questions and Answers on Monday night with most of the
panellists, relieved no doubt to be finished on the subject of judges or
tribunals or war, resorting to flippant answers, exhibiting something close
to delight that the most mixed up girl on Planet Pop was larking about
again. Only one panellist seemed to find anything remotely cynical about
the whole affair. Maureen Gaffney's tack was that it was all an
attention-grabbing stunt by a highly intelligent woman who knows how to
work the press. Anyone who looked closely at the carefully applied mascara
in her priestly photographs, the earrings that matched her blue clerical
garb, the presence of a tabloid reporter at the makeshift ceremony could
come swiftly to the same conclusion.

If we are looking for motive though, Sinead would have us go much further
back than 11 years ago when the golden-voiced south-sider first started
selling records. Incidentally the very first interview published in this
newspaper with the singer in 1988 began with the following sentence; "Being
born on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Sinead O'Connor might well
have been destined for the church".

Take it, or leave it, but according to Sinead when she was five years old
she made a deal with God the way some people make pacts with the devil. If
he would help her through a well-documented abusive childhood then when
Sinead got bigger she would do whatever she could to spread His word, and
make people turn to Him.

Her story continues, and again it can be taken with a biblical sack of
salt, that she didn't want to become a nun and so she became a singer, the
modern version of a priest. In her eyes Bob Marley is a priest. So is Bob
Dylan. Even Van Morrison is afforded divine qualities. The way she tells
it, everything in her life has been inexorably leading to this moment. She
has been writing hymns, or as she calls them, hers, for all of her career.
Nobody, least of all those who know her, she asserts, should be the least
bit surprised.

The rest of us aren't that shocked either that she has metamorphosed into a
Super Heroine, a collared crooning crusader, ready, Pow! to save, Bam!, the
world, Biff!, from evil. It's just another in a long line of wacky
outbursts or escapades. Its just slightly wackier, that's all. It started
subtly. She shaved her head to be different. Wore docks and ballet skirts
to challenge perceptions. Slagged off U2, at that time a rite of passage
for any remotely successful Irish band or singer. Nothing too unremarkable
yet, then.

Then fame, fame, fatal fame, took hold and occasionally she would pick up a
political hot potato (the IRA, the famine, the state of the nation) and
juggle with it till she got her fingers burnt. There was the full page ad
she took out in this newspaper cataloguing the effect the abuse of her
mother had on her. So much dirty family linen had rarely been washed in
public. Her family was deeply and publicly wounded.

Later she wouldn't let the national anthem be played at a US concert. She
regularly turns up in person to berate journalists who she feels have
misrepresented her. She tears up a picture of the Pope. Then more recently
the highly publicised custody battle for her daughter with journalist John
Waters leaves her, she says herself, suicidal. Some weeks later she becomes
a priest and apologises to "anyone who I have ever pissed off. If God has
forgiven me then why can't they?".

She is an easy figure of fun, but because she has wished, indeed prayed,
herself into this position, we deem her an uneasy figure for compassion.
Michael Jackson sleeps in an oxygen tent. Sinead O'Connor thinks she is a
priest.

But then she will tell you that everyone thought Jesus was crazy so this
reaction is only to be expected. "And maybe it is crazy . . . But don't you
think it is sad that people think I'm mad because I love God so much I
wanted to marry him?" She wants an answer. You respond with what you hope
is a noncommittal "mmmm . . ." You are sincerely hoping that her "ministry"
brings joy and happiness to people, to her. (She has yet to say how she
thinks her ordination and her planned move to Lourdes may impact on her two
children.) And rapidly suffocating all of the hope is the thought that it
can only end in tears.

After she very promptly returned a call from us on Thursday, talking for
around 45 minutes, Sinead left two messages on the answer-phone. The first
was about how she was setting up a healing centre in Lourdes with the
donation that she had decided to retrieve from the bishop who had ordained
her in Lourdes, where travellers from Ireland could visit for healing "or
whatever". It was reminiscent of Princess Diana's famous phrase "battered
this and battered that".

The second went like this. "Hello . . . this is Sinead, I mean Bernadette,
look one thing that's really important to get across is that I have
observed the press campaign organised by the Vatican against Bishop
Comiskey when he rocked the status quo of the church . . . I'm not afraid
of any of the ways the Vatican may wage wars against me . . . nothing can
take my priesthood away even if I was to be killed and they would make a
saint of me if they killed me . . .

She said she meant no harm, only good. She said that all of us will know
this by the fruits of her work. She said . . . she said a lot of things and
whether or not the words of this young woman, who admits she has been
deeply depressed for much of her life, should be taken at face value, it
seems the decent thing to hope that the seeds she is now sowing won't later
leave a bitter taste in all our mouths.