LAW HAS FOND MEMORIES OF TENURE HERE

BOSTON -- A day in the life of Cardinal Bernard Law begins in prayer with a 7:30 a.m. Mass, and might include going to the United Nations to discuss the problem of refugees or going to a wake or a Boy Scout Council banquet.

The personal meetings with visitors and correspondence are unending. On this night, after talking to a group of youths ready to be confirmed, Law expected to return to his residence about 10:30 p.m.

The job is big.

The 61-year-old archbishop of Boston ministers to 2 million Catholics, and oversees 398 parishes, 860 active diocesan priests, 120 schools, two seminaries and a hospital system.

In contrast, the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese he left behind in 1984 had 52,000 Catholics spread over 26,000 square miles.

"I loved driving back and forth across that vast diocese," he recalled. "... I found it a beautiful part of the country.

"Those drives became part of my rhythm of life."

The candor of the people and the drive through the countryside are his strongest memories of his 10 years as the bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese.

"There was a sort of no-nonsense directness and simplicity about people's approach which was refreshing then," he said. "I find it even more refreshing now."

Law, a 1953 graduate of Harvard, became a priest in 1961. He marched against segregation during one of his early assignments in Mississippi. He also edited a diocesan newspaper for five years.

In southern Missouri, Law developed a reputation as a doctrinal conservative known for his spirit of ecumenism.

He has been outspoken in behalf of the homeless and against nuclear arms, and since arriving in Boston has taken highly publicized trips to Nicaragua, Cuba and Poland.

He has established an office of black Catholics and a cardinal's committee on the cities. The church has an inner city youth program whose scholarship fund drive recently netted $1.3 million.

Law is known as one of the Vatican's strongest defenders in the United States, a doctrinal conservative who in a 1989 meeting with Pope John Paul II spoke of marriage and family life being undermined by exaggerating the rights of the individual and the right of privacy.

He recently completed his six-year role as one of 12 top clerics who helped draft the church's new universal catechism. The catechism, the first since the Council of Trent in 1566, was needed to apply church doctrine to changing modern life, Law said

One change the shakeup of the balance of power in the world has made the eventual naming of an American pope more of a possibility.

In the past, practical considerations have more or less excluded Americans from consideration, Law said. "It probably will become less of a problem in later generations as long as the world is not divided into two blocks."

On the other hand, "If there is one superpower, it might be just as well that a pope would come from someplace else," he added.

"It's going to depend on the judgment of the cardinals in conclave trying to come up with the best person suited at that moment.

"I trust in the influence of the Holy Spirit working in that process," he said.