When Sinead O’Connor tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Evening Reside” in 1992, her protest triggered a good greater uproar in her native Eire than in america. 13 years earlier, greater than one million individuals — roughly a 3rd of Eire’s inhabitants — had gathered in Dublin to listen to that very same pope rejoice mass.

But by the point of her demise this week at 56 years outdated, Ms. O’Connor’s brash acts and forthright statements now not rattled lots of her fellow residents. Her fiery arc as a performer and public determine coincided with Eire’s social and cultural transformation, leaving Ms. O’Connor extra in sync with the extra numerous, tolerant, and secular society her nation has turn out to be.

Whether or not it was campaigning for abused ladies and youngsters; homosexual, lesbian and transgender individuals; AIDS sufferers, racial minorities, refugees, or Palestinians, Ms. O’Connor by no means relented. And her journey as an activist and a musician was inextricably entwined with that of recent Eire.

“She was nonetheless on the sting,” mentioned Mary McAuliffe, a social historian and director of gender research at College Faculty Dublin. “However a lot of Eire moved over, and joined her.”

The outpouring of grief and love for Ms. O’Connor, Dr. McAuliffe mentioned, was recognition for her braveness in going up in opposition to “the bastions of the state and conservatism that some individuals thought would possibly by no means fall.”

The Eire of 1992, through the early days of Ms. O’Connor’s stardom, was nonetheless dominated by the social and sexual doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Abortion was banned in virtually all circumstances, divorce was unlawful, and girls and women who turned pregnant out of marriage might nonetheless be whisked away by their households to offer beginning in secret to cover their “disgrace.”

When Ms. O’Connor, who was raised Catholic, began talking out in opposition to the church and different authorities, she was usually dismissed, notably by conservatives, together with many males, as a risky and ill-informed consideration seeker.

Since then, Eire has largely turned away from the strict teachings of the church, which has been discredited by revelations of widespread clerical sexual abuse of youngsters, amongst different scandals. The Irish have voted to legalize abortion, divorce and same-sex marriage, every time in a landslide. And Ms. O’Connor, as soon as shunned by some as an outcast and caricatured by others loopy, is now being mourned as a nationwide treasure and a severe social critic.

“She had a standing as an individual you couldn’t ignore,” mentioned Daniel Mulhall, a former Irish ambassador to america. “She is of a technology that went via that course of, and he or she was an uncommon personage in that technology.”

Eire’s transformation, Mr. Mulhall mentioned, was propelled by greater than any single agent, even one as outspoken and memorable as Ms. O’Connor. Training, financial improvement and membership within the European Union all performed a component — along with the church’s decline, which Mr. Mulhall mentioned was swifter and extra full than in just about any Western nation.

However historians mentioned Ms. O’Connor’s early stands in opposition to the abuses within the church and the mistreatment of girls, youngsters and different weak individuals would earn her a spot within the file of the nation’s transformation. “She’s going to absolutely be remembered within the historical past books of her time, social and political, when they’re written,” Professor McAuliffe mentioned.

She got here to prominence within the Nineteen Eighties, when there have been “a whole lot of silences, and a whole lot of secrets and techniques, for the highly effective, the church and the establishments,” mentioned Sinéad Gleeson, a author and commentator on tradition and politics.

“Sinead got here alongside and was saying the unsayable about abortion rights and AIDS and racism and institutional abuse,” Ms. Gleeson mentioned. “She provoked a whole lot of fury and mock as a result of lots of people didn’t need her telling the reality about these items.”

Ms. O’Connor additionally by no means ceased pushing the boundaries. In 1999, after making waves by defying the church, she provoked criticism and mock — from some progressives, in addition to social and non secular conservatives — when she had herself ordained as a priest by an “unbiased bishop” linked to a department of the Latin Tridentine Church, a small breakaway sect of Catholicism. Catholic doctrine forbids ladies from changing into clergymen.

But by 2018, when Ms. O’Connor transformed to Islam and adjusted her title to Shuhada Sadaqat, the response was extra muted.

“I believe it’s to do with the truth that lots of people acknowledge that she was proper” in lots of her views earlier than they had been common, Ms. Gleeson mentioned. “That’s why many individuals are so accepting of Sinead, as a result of she did one thing no one else had the heart to do. They mentioned, that’s Sinead. She will be able to do what she needs.”

If, at first, some individuals accused her of adopting causes to bolster her ego or reputation, not not like another rock stars, O’Connor’s lifelong dedication to talking for justice, and the toll it took on her, commercially and personally, confirmed in any other case. Her psychological well being suffered at instances, however she made {that a} trigger, too — talking up about trauma, lengthy a taboo topic, as a manner of liberating others to take action.

Eire’s head of state, President Michael D. Higgins, led the tributes to O’Connor on the night that she died.

“To these of us who had the privilege of realizing her, one couldn’t however at all times be struck by the depth of her fearless dedication to the necessary points which she dropped at public consideration, irrespective of how uncomfortable these truths might have been,” he mentioned in an official assertion. “Might her spirit discover the peace she sought in so many alternative methods.”

CMAT, a younger Irish musician who’s herself changing into broadly identified for her wit and nonconformity, mentioned that Ms. O’Connor had been a significant a part of her life as a feminine singer-songwriter.

“Sinead will eternally be a determine of womanly defiance, for a rustic that by no means appreciated ladies,” she mentioned. “I believe the explanation that Eire has come to a standstill over her demise is as a result of we’re grieving for the life she deserved to have — one freed from the punishment, mockery and torment she suffered by the hands of the general public for talking out, constantly, in opposition to abuses of energy.”

Fintan O’Toole, an Irish Occasions columnist and considered one of Eire’s main cultural critics, mentioned that O’Connor had uncovered, and even embodied, the ache of girls in a misogynistic society.

“However she did that not via self-pity however with defiance, humor, magnificence and brilliance,” he mentioned in an electronic mail. “She turned her fragility right into a type of energy. She might be terribly missed.”

Mark Landler contributed reporting from London.