THE first thing that comes across to most people who meet Archbishop Sean Brady for the first time is his ordinariness. He is a reassuring figure, not an awe inspiring one", says a Cavan priest who knows him well.

Few have a bad word to say about him people use adjectives like sincere, gentle, shrewd, fair, kindly and decent to describe him. "If somebody didn't like Sean Brady, there would be something wrong with that person, says a long standing friend.

He is quiet spoken and shy. From 1967 to 1980 he taught languages at St Patrick's College in his native Cavan before spending another 13 years in Rome as vicerector and rector of the Irish College there.

A year as a parish priest in Cavan was followed in December 1994 by his surprise move to Armagh to become coadjutor (or apprentice) archbishop to Cardinal Daly.

He has spent the past two years visiting the parishes and getting to know the priests and people. "He's very anxious to be a priest's man," says a diocesan priest. "Because of his friendliness and approachability, the inclination is to call him Sean. Such a good rapport with his priests will be very helpful for him as a diocesan bishop.

Archbishop Brady will have to be much more than a diocesan bishop. But his strategy seems to be to concentrate first on the pastoral task of getting to know his own diocese. In this way, he is preparing himself for the bigger spiritual and political task of leading the entire Irish church.

Whereas Cardinal Daly was a leader who relished the challenges of the modern world. Dr Brady will be, initially at least, more taken up with the concerns of the Catholic Church.

"He is very much a man of the institution," says a long time priest friend. A "moderate conservative" in theology, he will adhere strictly to the lines laid down by Pope John Paul II and his predecessors when it comes to the questions of women's ordination, celibacy, divorce and contraception.

Thus at his first press conference as archbishop this week, his first thoughts were about the historic opportunity for renewal in the Church prompted by the millennium, a favourite project of the Pope's.

On economic and social questions, he will be more adventurous. This was clear from his Trocaire lecture at Maynooth last year, when he used unusually strong language to lambast child poverty in the developing world, the waste of resources caused by arms spending and excessive debt repayments and the individualism and greed which underlie much free-market philosophy.

"He has a sharp social conscience," said a fellow bishop this week. "He is very also shrewd and reads human situations well."

In Brazil and El Salvador last November, as part of a Trocaire delegation, Dr Brady impressed many people with his humility, his eagerness to listen and learn and his willingness, once briefed, to challenge more conservative Latin American bishops on social justice issues.

His openness was again in evidence at the National Conference of Priests annual meeting two months ago. "His talk on a listening and learning church was fairly cliched stuff, and he was flummoxed by questions on such subjects as women's ordination, says a priest who was there.

""However, he could have given a brilliant address and left immediately. Instead, he gave a bad talk but then stayed for every session. In that he was far more eloquent about wanting a listening and learning church."

When it comes to the devil's brew of Northern politics, the new primate's nervousness will lead to considerable caution in public statements.

Some Northern priests wonder about his ability to deal with the huge political pressures a Catholic primate must regularly face; whether, for example, he has the mental strength and ability to shut out his emotions which sustained Cardinal Daly during such times of crisis.

On the other hand, he is not a defensive Northern tribal Catholic. At this week's press conference he appeared to indicate that he might be more sympathetic to Catholic parents wanting to send their children to integrated schools than his predecessor.

Dr Brady is also no pious, other worldly prelate. He would share the constitutional nationalism of his father, once a Fianna Fail local councillor, and has a keen interest in the Republic's politics.

HIS kindness is near legendary. The story is told that, while rector of the Irish College, he insisted on taking in an elderly, ill and homeless Galway man who had somehow ended up in Rome and housing him for years in the college's basement.

He will need all his physical strength for the gruelling routine of a Catholic primate, travelling 100,000 miles a year within Ireland on bishops' conference business and, as its president, acting as the recipient of all commands and communications from Rome.

Dr Brady's reputation in Rome as a good delegator will continue in Armagh. Unlike Cardinal Daly, or Cardinal William Conway in the 1970s, he will not dominate the bishops' conference with his intellectual powers or his. ability to master a bishop's brief better than the bishop himself.

He will turn for help on theology and social questions to men such as Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick and Bishop Laurence Forristal of Ossory. He has few of the media and communications skills of Cardinal Daly, and will rely on the advice of Cavan friends like Father Ray Brady of Killinkere, a writer and local newspaper columnist, and Father John O'Donnell of Blackljon, a former president of BLE, the national athletics body.

The phrases used most frequently about the new Archbishop of Armagh are "unproven" and "unknown quantity". Dr Brady knows that inspirational leadership is conspicuously lacking in the Irish church at the moment.

If he cannot provide it, there are those in Rome who believe others will have to step into the breach, and the centre of gravity of the Irish church may move away from Armagh, as it did in the last century and in the 1950s and 1960s.