Less than a year after shocking the world with the announcement that she had been ordained as a Catholic priest, the ever-unpredictable Sinéad O'Connor has come out as a lesbian.
"Although I haven't been very open about that, and throughout most of my life I've gone out with blokes because I haven't necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a lesbian, I actually am a lesbian," the Irish songbird tells Curve, the nation's best-selling lesbian mag.
We don't even want to think about what the Pope would say.
O'Connor, the world's first pop-singing lesbian priest, has been all over the map lately when it comes to her sexuality. Despite the closet-exiting comments in Curve and a new single called "No Man's Woman," she sings of having sex with "every man in sight" in "Daddy I'm Fine," another ditty off her hotly anticipated new CD, Faith and Courage. (Her first album since her 1997 best-of compilation, Faith is, um, out next Tuesday.)
And in the current issue of Time, the 33-year-old divorced mother of two (son Jake, 11, from her ex-husband, daughter Roisin, 3, from an ex-boyfriend), who now goes by her religious moniker, Mother Bernadette Mary, says she's close to acting more like her priestly peers. "I have a huge calling toward celibacy, which will probably ultimately be the way I'll go. Obviously I am a very sexual person, and that's why it's always been a struggle. And I don't feel that being celibate means I have to cut off my sexuality, because that's my life force."
In any case, no matter what the chameleon-like Sinéad does, chances are the Catholic Church proper will probably still diss her. She was ordained in the Latin Tridentine Church, a splinter group not officially recognized by the Vatican. And her history of anti-Catholic antics--supporting abortion, appearing as the Virgin Mary in the satirical film The Butcher Boy and her infamous 1992 appearance on Saturday Night Live, during which she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II--haven't exactly endeared her to the Church.
We can't wait for her next confession.