Times 26 June 2000 Handed by Dan Sinead O'Connor declaring herself a Catholic priest focuses new attention on the debate over the role of female within the church. By MARY ROURKE, Times Staff Writer Sinead O'Connor, the 33-year-old Irish pop star, is promoting her new CD, "Faith and Courage," dressed in a priest's collar. Though she has been a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, and famously ripped up the pope's photograph on "Saturday Night Live" in 1992, she now claims to be an ordained priest. In a recent interview with Time magazine, she also said she's changed more than her tune: Her clerical name, O'Connor said, is Mother Bernadette Maria. Can she really call herself a priest? Not according to the Catholic Church, which does not allow women priests. With her high public profile and outspoken nature, O'Connor has managed to call attention to a brisk and continuing debate about the role of women within the Roman Catholic Church. "Sinead O'Connor got this idea she'd like to be a priest, a priestess," said Catholic Press Office spokesman Des Cryan from Dublin, Ireland. "But quite honestly she's still a pop star and could hardly be assigned a ministry." (The clergyman who ordained O'Connor, Bishop Michael Cox, is part of a small renegade sect in Ireland whose own title is not considered valid by the church, according to Cryan.) The pope let his views be known six years ago when he declared that the church has "no authority to ordain women," and instructed Catholics to drop the debate.