When Sinead O’Connor tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992, her protest prompted a fair greater uproar in her native Ireland than within the United States. Thirteen years earlier, greater than 1,000,000 folks — roughly a 3rd of Ireland’s inhabitants — had gathered in Dublin to listen to that very same pope rejoice mass.

Yet by the point of her dying this week at 56 years previous, 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 Ireland’s social and cultural transformation, leaving Ms. O’Connor extra in sync with the extra various, tolerant, and secular society her nation has turn into.

Whether it was campaigning for abused ladies and youngsters; homosexual, lesbian and transgender folks; 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 contemporary Ireland.

“She was still on the edge,” mentioned Mary McAuliffe, a social historian and director of gender research at University College Dublin. “But much of Ireland 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 people thought might never fall.”

The Ireland of 1992, in the course of 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 nearly all instances, divorce was unlawful, and girls and ladies who grew to become pregnant out of marriage may nonetheless be whisked away by their households to offer delivery in secret to cover their “shame.”

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

Since then, Ireland has largely turned away from the strict teachings of the church, which has been discredited by revelations of widespread clerical sexual abuse of youngsters, among other 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 critical social critic.

“She had a standing as a person you couldn’t ignore,” mentioned Daniel Mulhall, a former Irish ambassador to the United States. “She is of a generation that went through that process, and she was an unusual personage in that generation.”

Ireland’s transformation, Mr. Mulhall mentioned, was propelled by greater than any single agent, even one as outspoken and memorable as Ms. O’Connor. Education, financial growth 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.

But historians mentioned Ms. O’Connor’s early stands in opposition to the abuses within the church and the mistreatment of ladies, kids and different weak folks would earn her a spot within the report of the nation’s transformation. “She will surely be remembered in the history books of her time, social and political, when they are written,” Professor McAuliffe mentioned.

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

“Sinead came along and was saying the unsayable about abortion rights and AIDS and racism and institutional abuse,” Ms. Gleeson mentioned. “She provoked a lot of fury and ridicule because a lot of people didn’t want her telling the truth about these things.”

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 “independent bishop” linked to a department of the Latin Tridentine Church, a small breakaway sect of Catholicism. Catholic doctrine forbids ladies from turning into monks.

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

“I think it’s to do with the fact that a lot of people recognize that she was right” in lots of her views earlier than they had been well-liked, Ms. Gleeson mentioned. “That’s why many people are so accepting of Sinead, because she did something nobody else had the guts to do. They said, that’s Sinead. She can do what she wants.”

If, at first, some folks accused her of adopting causes to bolster her ego or recognition, not in contrast to 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 means of liberating others to take action.

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

“To those of us who had the privilege of knowing her, one couldn’t but always be struck by the depth of her fearless commitment to the important issues which she brought to public attention, no matter how uncomfortable those truths may have been,” he mentioned in an official assertion. “May her spirit find the peace she sought in so many different ways.”

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

“Sinead will forever be a figure of womanly defiance, for a country that never liked women,” she mentioned. “I think the reason that Ireland has come to a standstill over her death is because we are grieving for the life she deserved to have — one free of the punishment, mockery and torment she suffered at the hands of the public for speaking out, consistently, against abuses of power.”

Fintan O’Toole, an Irish Times columnist and one among Ireland’s main cultural critics, mentioned that O’Connor had uncovered, and even embodied, the ache of ladies in a misogynistic society.

“But she did that not through self-pity but with defiance, humor, beauty and brilliance,” he mentioned in an electronic mail. “She turned her fragility into a form of strength. She will be terribly missed.”

Mark Landler contributed reporting from London.