Sinead O' Connor Suffered For Her Defense of Children. She Was Not wrong.

by Mary Sculley 

This authenticated 2003 photo of then Pope John Paul II (pope from 1978 till 2005 when he died) blessing Epstein and Maxwell at the Vatican isn't particularly damning in itself since Epstein was not formally charged with raping minor girls until 2006. The pope couldn't have known he was dealing with two pedophiles. But the two pedophiles knew exactly who they were dealing with: a religious leader who was not only massively compromised on pedophilia among the Catholic clergy but one who used the Vatican to render legitimacy to Zionist colonization of Palestine.

 

In October 1992, Irish singer Sinead O'Connor stood on the TV show Saturday Night Live (SNL) and tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II to protest rampant child sexual abuse within the Catholic church. She was ruthlessly pilloried by media, celebrities of the disreputable kind like Sinatra and Madonna, and Zionist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League. 

Just two weeks after the SNL event, she was booed by the audience at a Madison Square Garden event to honor the music of Bob Dylan. Her career as a pop singer which had only begun in the late 1980s was over as a result of the backlash. Being the extraordinary young woman that she was--outspoken against misogyny, white supremacy, the abuse of children, injustice--she saw the backlash to destroy her as a way to get back to her musical and creative roots. The conduct of Pope John Paul II before and after her iconoclastic act on SNL prove O'Connor to be something of a prophet if not a goddess.

 

In the early 1990s, child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy was just beginning to be exposed by survivors all over the world who were suing the church for Vatican complicity in the crimes against them. Until then, it was covered up by Catholic authorities, including Pope John Paul II during his previous tenure as archbishop of Kraków, Poland beginning in 1958. In 2023, Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek (who lives in Poland and has written extensively on child abuse in the Polish church) wrote 'Maxima culpa. John Paul II knew' where he draws his allegations from documents of the Polish secret service during communist rule. Since John Paul II was an aggressive anti-communist, it could be claimed that the secret service was slandering him. But in his tenure as pontiff, John Paul II continued to run interference between survivors of sexual abuse and the rapist clergy. 

 

As pope, John Paul II put all jurisdiction over sexual abuse cases under secret Vatican control. He ignored most allegations, defended many of the accused, and refused to turn pedophiles over to civil authorities for prosecution. Perhaps the most egregious case is that of Cardinal Bernard Law, the archbishop of Boston from 1984 until he was forced to resign in 2002 for 20 years of covering up for pedophile priests by shifting them around from parish to parish rather than report them to the police. Rather than defrock Law, John Paul II brought him to the Vatican and made him prelate of a basilica in Rome.

 

All that sexual criminality would have made John Paul II sympatico enough with Epstein and Maxwell. But then there were his political overtures to Israel when in 1993 he signed an agreement establishing formal diplomatic ties between the Vatican and Israel. To cement the deal, he made a state visit to Israel in 2000 where he did that thing all Zionist politicians do at the Western Wall--put a piece of paper in the wall asking God for forgiveness for crimes committed against Jews by Christians. Then he visited the holocaust museum to honor the six million victims of the Nazi genocide. Since the crimes against Jews, especially those crimes incited by the Vatican, are egregious throughout history, it's appropriate for John Paul II to accept responsibility and it is certainly right to honor the victims of the Nazi holocaust. But what about the Palestinians?

 

John Paul II met with Yasser Arafat during his visit since Arafat had signed the Oslo Accords in 1994 legitimizing Israel's occupation and expropriation of the West Bank. He said mass in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, stopped in at a refugee camp near Bethlehem to say hello, and shed a few tears about Palestinian suffering before heading back to Jerusalem. 

 

If you want to know what Epstein and Maxwell liked about Pope John Paul II, it is his monstrous compromises with sexual crimes against children and his support for Zionist colonialism. So this 2003 encounter at the Vatican does not damn the pope. But the cesspool of Vatican politics when it comes to protecting children, including Palestinian children, and when it comes to supporting Zionist violence against Palestinians does damn him. It also highlights the connection of Epstein and Maxwell to the world's civil, religious, and political elite and explains why there has as of now not been a single prosecution of the pedophiles identified in the Epstein papers.

 

(Photo from 2003 has been authenticated by several sources. It is not AI-generated. It became public in the 2020 prosecution of Maxwell)