Sinead O’Connor’s American Kindness Tour…

It was here, in NYC that Sinead O’Connor collected her first Grammy Awards. I was in the room at Pete Townsend’s public 50th Birthday Party concert at Carnegie Hall, 1994, when Sinead O’Connor joined the Chieftains on stage along with Roger Daltry, Irish National Orchestra, step dancers, Simon Townsend on drums for the ecstatic and extended version of  ‘Baba O’Riley’. Roger Daltry, roared, ‘All Pete Townsend wants us to do tonight is sing “Baba O’Riley” to him on his 50th birthday, and so we will.”  The song was written for and on behalf of his Irish family.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KX05v4dpss

It was also here, two years before, in 1992 when Sinead O’Connor ripped up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live. Some critics, said, and still say, Sinead O’Connor, committed career suicide that night. But I never believed that for a minute. It was a self sacrificing artistic act of sublime courage and resolve that immediately called attention to crimes against humanity on worldwide TV and it’s still playing on the internet.

A massive, far and wide, underground crime syndicate and Vatican cover up, on behalf of felonious pedophile priests, on the run, in and around the country and coming soon to a parish near you! Ongoing for decades, and never investigated or prosecuted by state and or federal law enforcement agencies, while enabling pedophile priests to serve mass, teach and counsel youth in the privacy of their office. What? Huh.

In that prescient, moment, Sinead O’Connor was transformed into a whistleblower in a state of justifiable rage, while feeling so much and being utterly fearless. But like all effective whistleblowers, she was vilified, scapegoated and demonized by the Vatican establishment, enforcers, far and wide, while children, teenagers and adults were experiencing and reliving in isolation, horrendous crimes against humanity. From Ireland to Boston to Jersey City to Minnesota to Los Angeles, in Ridgefield, NJ and back, on the alter, again.

Full disclosure: There was a thick file of decades long pedophile complaints about former Father Peter Cheplic of Ridgefield, NJ, tucked away in the Archdiocese of Newark NJ.  The investigation of Father Cheplic a former Ridgefeld NJ priest, heated up and became increasingly public in the early 2, 000’s a.d. via North Jersey Newspapers, such as the Record.  As late as, 2012, one of my all time favorite Record newspaper columnists, Mike Kelly, told another, ‘Cheplic fall out story’, That’s what I call them sometimes, ‘fall out redemption stories’  http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/171462021_Looking_for_laughs_in_a_tale_of_tragedy.html

Back Stories: On the eve, of the church trial, prosecuting Monsignor Peter Cheplic, he resigned, took off his collar, gave up his pension and went into hiding, living on the run; and he hasn’t been seen or heard from, since.  But I know where he is going.  I never liked Father Peter Cheplic or the other ‘revolving door priests’ who came and went so quickly…and in such a flurry from the church and school formally called Saint Matthews. I wondered a lot about that as I stared out the window of my Catholic School classroom through the -third grade. I was outta there, too.  As I grew older my convictions remained unshakable. “I don’t think this is what Jesus, Mary and all the Saints had in mind. And I said so, telling my artistic mother Helen, over and over, again, ‘Father Cheplic and or the other ‘Fathers’  are really giving me the creeps, again. Please come and take me home! Always patient, and loving nurse Lucille Walsh, a former, Sister of Charity, who believed in me, made seemingly never ending calls home to my mother from the sanctuary otherwise known as the nurses office.  And so she did take me home and out in the third grade.  To this day, I take immediate solace in Peter Gabriel’s (Roman Catholic by birth) song, ‘Solsbury Hill’, song and lyrics,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fF8wU4Nl9Y

Elevated, Monsignor Peter Cheplic served on the alter, at my mother Helen’s funeral mass, one month before my twelfth birthday and Confirmation, May 1970.