Rex Cullingham Ramirez

Rex Cullingham Ramirez was born on December 15, 1967, in Balangiga, Eastern Samar, in the Archdiocese of Palo. He completed high school and philosophy at the Sacred Heart Seminary in Palo and studied theology at the Loyola School of Theology in Manila. He was ordained a priest for Palo on March 27, 1995, and served his first two years as special secretary to the archbishop. From 1997 to 2007 he studied in Rome at the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant'Anselmo, earning a licentiate in liturgy and beginning doctoral studies; in that decade he ministered to the Filipino community at San Leone Magno in Rome from 1998 to 2002, then served as resident chaplain of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart retreat house and chaplain to the Filipino community of La Storta in the Diocese of Porto-Santa Rufina from 2002 to 2007. Back in the Philippines he was professor and spiritual director at St. John the Evangelist School of Theology in Palo from 2007 to 2014, coordinator of the Lay Apostolate and of the Liturgical Commission, and a member of the priests' council. In 2013 he became rector of the Sacred Heart Seminary in Palo, and from 2014 he served as rector of the Metropolitan Cathedral and Vicar General of Palo. Wikipedia's priesthood year of 1997 is wrong; the bulletin-derived Herald account governs with March 27, 1995, the same day and month, with 1997 being the year his Rome studies began. No ordaining bishop is shipped: Wikipedia alone names Pedro Dean, and the bulletin names none. The Herald appointment piece prints 'Ester Samar', a typo for Eastern Samar, not repeated.

On October 13, 2017, he was appointed Bishop of Naval, succeeding Filomeno Bactol, who had retired; Naval, created on November 29, 1988, covers the island of Biliran and four municipalities at the northwestern tip of Leyte as a suffragan of Palo. He was ordained a bishop on January 9, 2018, at Palo Cathedral, with Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as principal consecrator, and he took canonical possession of Naval Cathedral on January 12, 2018. The ordination was moved to Palo because Tropical Storm Urduja, known internationally as Kai-tak, had damaged roads and bridges in Biliran; the Herald profile confusingly says in one sentence that possession was 'on Jan. 9' and then states plainly that possession took place on Jan. 12, and Jan. 12 governs, matching the roster. Wikipedia's infobox, which gives his consecration as January 12, 2018, by John F. As Palo's cathedral rector he had helped rebuild the cathedral after Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 and had mobilized resources for Pope Francis's January 2015 visit to Leyte, when Tropical Storm Mekkhala raged during the papal Mass.

In the Traditionis custodes window, no governing act of his own concerning the 1962 Missal was found, and his window record is thin: the only window items surfaced are Wikipedia-only claims about a diocesan healthcare ministry created during COVID-19 and a CBCP Episcopal Commission on Health Care chairmanship from 2019 to 2025, neither opened, so neither is included as a work. No shippable quotation from Ramirez himself was found: Cardinal Tagle's tempest line in the Herald profile is hedged by the article itself ('in these or in similar words') and is never quoted as verbatim, and the profile's 'build bridges, not walls' line is the author's paraphrase of what Ramirez is 'bound to exhort', not a quotation.