I wasn't surprised to hear of Sinéad O'Connor's death - she'd seemed so fragile in recent years - but I was shocked. Almost a week later I still have a feeling of great loss.
For many Irish people of her generation, my generation, she wasn't just a brilliant songwriter and singer. She was one of the first to speak and sing the truth about our country: the abusive Catholic chuch and the patriarchy it enabled, the abandonment of children, the lamentable state of mental health services. She sang from anger and hurt, and out of illness, but she sang so that things might change, and she was one of the catalysts behind the wave of changes for the better that have swept across Ireland these past twenty years.
And how she sang.
The hymn 'Make me a channel of your peace' is known by every Catholic raised in Ireland. But when Sinéad sang it, the prayer of St. Francis, it was like hearing it for the first time. You realised that you'd been saying these lines without thinking about them, whereas she meant every single word. And she wanted us to mean them too.
She sang it on the Late Late Show after having a makeover for charity (in support of refugees from the former Yugoslavia). It was like being visited by an angel.
