Her protesting the Pope had nothing to do with pedophile priests

The sex abuse was not widespread knowledge. It was her personal experience with nuns as a child.

Sinéad O’Connor's torment as a victim of the Catholic Church's Magdalene Laundries
https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/sinead-oconnor-magdalene-laundry

Sinead O'Connor's 2013 interview was published just 24 hours after the release of a damning report on the Catholic Churches' "Magdelene Laundries", which highlighted state collusion with the Nuns who ran them.

O’Connor described how she was just 14 years old when she was sent to the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity laundry, in Dublin, after she was labeled a "problem child." This particular Magdalene Laundry only shut its doors in 1996.

She said “We were girls in there, not women, just children really. And the girls in there cried every day.

“It was a prison. We didn’t see our families, we were locked in, cut off from life, deprived of a normal childhood.

“We were told we were there because we were bad people. Some of the girls had been raped at home and not believed.

“One girl was in because she had a bad hip and her family didn’t know what to do with her. It was a great grief to us.”

The rock star explained how her 18 months in High Park in the Drumcondra suburb of Dublin left her so angry at the injustice that it was part of the reason she caused worldwide controversy by tearing up a picture of the Pope on live television.