The friend, named John, “cursed like anything,” says Heath, not realizing he was on a boat with a bishop.

Heath, embarassed, says he wanted to tell his friend to stop, but Law told him not to worry about it.

When the local newspaper later ran a picture of Law announcing his visit to the island, John realized who his sailing companion had been and called up the bishop to apologize.

According to Heath, Law immediately put John at ease, calling him a “good man” and referring to his cursing simply as a “foreign tongue.”

This tolerance came from a man whose language only rarely dipped into cursing.

“I think the strongest word I ever heard him use was ‘damn,’” Oliver says.

The Famous Archbishop

After progressively moving through the ranks of the Catholic Church, Law landed at Archbishop of Boston in 1984.

A year later, Law became the first Harvard graduate to join the College of Cardinals, according to Cessario.

As archbishop, Law—who had moved from Mexico to Colombia to the Virgin Islands during his childhood—took stances on many international policy issues, calling for debt relief for third world countries and an end to the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba.

His archdiocese was the fourth-largest in the country and included over two million Catholics. He wrote op-ed pieces for the Washington Post and spoke before President Clinton. In the United States, Law became a very public figure—a salient representative of Catholicism.

“The office of bishop is looked upon as a grace to be exercised,” Cessario says. “I’m sure he understood it that way.”

“He has all of the personal qualities that you would expect to find in a senator,” Cessario adds. “He’s a man of great personal presence, and of polished speech.”

Friends say they maintain respect and admiration for Law, in spite of the severe criticism he has received and any administrative mistakes he may have made.

“If ever I knew a saint, in terms of personal virtue, I think that he was the one,” Oliver said. “I’m not sure St. Francis would have made a good archbishop, though.”