Reynaldo Gonda Evangelista
Reynaldo Gonda Evangelista, OFS, was born May 8, 1960, in Barangay San Jose, Mabini, Batangas, the fifth of nine children of Benjamin C. Evangelista and Rufina Gonda. He attended Anilao Elementary School in 1967, Mabini Central Elementary School in 1970, St. Francis de Sales Minor Seminary in Lipa City for high school, St. Francis de Sales Regional College Seminary in Barangay Marawoy, Lipa City, for philosophy from 1977, and St. Alphonsus School of Theology in Lucena City for theology from 1981. After his ordination he took pastoral counseling at the Ateneo Summer Institute in 1987 and later attended a course on seminary formation at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome, during which studies he joined the Secular Franciscan Order. His episcopal motto is Mitis Et Humilis Corde, 'Gentle and Humble of Heart'.
He was ordained a deacon on February 26, 1986, at the Carmel of St. Joseph Monastery in Lucena City by Ruben T. Profugo, Bishop of Lucena, and ordained a priest on June 19, 1986, at San Sebastian Cathedral in Lipa City by Mariano G. Gaviola, Archbishop of Lipa. As a priest in the Archdiocese of Lipa he served as professor at St. Francis de Sales Minor Seminary from 1986 to 1995, assistant prefect of discipline from 1986 to 1987, assistant spiritual director from 1987 to 1990, moderator of the Association of Lipa Archdiocesan Seminarians from 1987 to 1993, assistant director of the Archdiocesan Youth Commission from 1988 to 1990, vice rector of the Minor Seminary from 1990 to 1991, rector of the Minor Seminary from 1991 to 1995, member of the presbyteral council ex officio from 1991 to 1995, member of the Board of Consultors from 1992 to 1997, ordinary confessor of the Missionary Catechists of the Sacred Heart in Sabang, Lipa City, from 1994 to 2000, rector of the Regional College Seminary from 1995 to 2000 and again in 2004, member of the Commission on Clergy in 1997 and chairman in 2004, parish priest of San Guillermo Parish in Talisay, Batangas, from 2000 to 2004, and member of the CBCP Office on Women from 2005 to 2009.
He was appointed Bishop of Boac on December 11, 2004, consecrated on January 26, 2005, at San Sebastian Cathedral in Lipa City by Antonio Franco, Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines, and installed on February 22, 2005, as the third bishop of Boac, succeeding José Francisco Oliveros. Pope Francis appointed him Bishop of Imus on April 8, 2013, the first Filipino bishop appointed to a diocese by Pope Francis. He was installed on June 5, 2013, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Pillar in Imus, with canonical possession at a Mass with Apostolic Nuncio Giuseppe Pinto and Cardinals Luis Antonio Tagle, Gaudencio Rosales, and Ricardo Vidal concelebrating, as the fifth bishop of Imus, succeeding Tagle, who had served Imus from 2001 to 2011 before his appointment to Manila.
No decree, permission, suppression, expansion, or transfer of the Traditional Latin Mass by Bishop Evangelista, in Boac or in Imus, was found in the searches listed.
His public record in the window is ordinary diocesan governance, not a liturgical act; nothing found here is coded as a governing act on the 1962 Missal. The Boac tenure closed in 2013, before the TC window in any case.