Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley, a priest and a historian at Fordham University, said that many priests in New York watched the news conference, and that “the people I talk to are all very pleased.

“He comes across as very intelligent and gregarious and a happy person, someone that’s comfortable with people,” said Monsignor Shelley, who has known the archbishop for 25 years. “He gives religion a good name.”

When it comes to dealing with politicians who vote in favor of abortion rights, Archbishop Dolan said he would rather persuade them through “engagement” and “trusting dialogue,” rather than confrontation. He is not one of the small but vocal minority of American bishops who favor denying communion to Catholic politicians who support the right to abortion.

(In fact, later in the day, he said he had received congratulatory phone calls from President Obama and from Gov. David A. Paterson and other New York politicians.)

At the news conference, he sidestepped a question about his position on a bill before the New York Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations to allow more victims of sexual abuse to file lawsuits. Similar bills passed in other states have led to a flood of litigation and public revelations about the extent of clergy sexual abuse. The New York State Catholic Conference has lobbied against it. Archbishop Dolan said the issue was a matter of “such delicacy and precision that I’m going to have to study that one hard.”

In Milwaukee, where he has served for seven years, Archbishop Dolan has disappointed advocates for victims of sexual abuse, who accuse him of failing to find and remove all offenders from the ministry  though they acknowledge that he was one of few bishops to make public a list of abusive priests.

The archbishop has never studied or lived in New York, and does not speak much Spanish, the mother tongue of one-third of the roughly 2.5 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York. At the news conference, he said he was “still trying to learn,” but knew enough to celebrate the Mass and “give a rather childlike homily.”