Julio Cardinal Rosales was born on September 18, 1906 in Calbayog, Samar. He studied for the priesthood at the Seminario Colegio de San Vicente de Paul under the Padres Paules or Vincentians. He was barely 23 years of age when he was ordained priest by Bishop Sofronio Hacbang on June 2, 1929. He started his ministry as an Assistant Parish Priest in Catbalogan, Samar, and then for eleven years he was Assistant Parish Priest at Tacloban, Leyte. As chaplain and teacher in St. Paul’s College (now Divine Word University) he had as one of his proteges the future First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Romualdez Marcos.
On June 29, 1946 Pope Pius XII appointed him first Bishop of Tagbilaran, Bohol. He was consecrated on the following September 21 by the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Gulielmo Piani, S.D.B. He would later on recall the Diocese of Tagbilaran as “his first love.” Hardly four years after, on February 19, 1950 he was installed as Archbishop of Cebu at the Pro-Cathedral of Sto. Rosario, the Cathedral having been destroyed during the Second World War. The new Archbishop was to continue the work of reconstruction left by his predecessor while at the same time governing his former diocese as its Apostolic Administrator until 1952.
The future Cardinal held the reins of the Archdiocese for 33 years. One of the first things he did was to resuscitate the Cathedral and the convent from the ruins of war. He completed the construction of the Seminario Mayor in its new site in San Jose de la Montaña, Mabolo. Because of the war, the seminary had been temporarily transferred from its site in Martires Street (M.J. Cuenco St.) to Argao (for the Minor Seminarians) and Sibonga (for the students of Philosophy and Theology). The Seminario Menor de San Carlos became later Pope John XXIII Minor Seminary. In 1952 he revived the Lungsoranon, headed by Father Diosdado Camomot and Father Cesar Alcoseba.
With the stroke of his pen, the foundations of houses of formation for religious were laid, such as, for example, Berchman’s College for the Jesuits, the Sacred Heart Missionary Seminary, those for the Salesians, Franciscans and Redemptorists, the monasteries of Carmel, of the Pink Sisters and of the Poor Clares. Parochial Schools in the Archdiocese reached in 1982 a total of 49 although many of them are still below subsistence level. Religious congregations of men and women in the same year totalled 12 and 27 respectively. Parishes reached the total of 107 before the Cardinal’s retirement.
In 1954 Archbishop Rosales spearheaded the holding of Marian Congresses in the Parishes in preparation for the centennial celebration of the definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The celebration in Cebu was attended by Cardinal Quiroga y Palacios. Two years after, the centennial anniversary of the Apparition of the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was celebrated in Cebu prior to the National Eucharistic Congress in Manila.
Patria de Cebu and Cebu Caritas are among the more memorable institutions established in his time. The idea of Patria de Cebu as a center or home for young students was conceived by Fr. Bernard Wroclage, S.V.D. (who died recently); he was its chief promoter. Cebu Caritas was intended to be the social action arm of the Archdiocese; later it included also the temporary Chancery.
Archbishop Rosales headed the Fourth Centennial Celebration of the Evangelization of the Philippines in 1965 Cebu being the cradle of Christianity in the Far East. The Papal Legate, Ildebrando Cardinal Antoniutti, who presided at the celebration laid the cornerstone of the seminary of the newly founded Mission Society of the Philippines in Tayud, Consolacion. Although it was Bishop Epifanio Surban of Dumaguete who conceived the idea and was commissioned by the Bishops’ Conference to direct and guide it in the beginning, the choice for Cebu was consonant with its status as the birthplace of Christianity in the Philippines and the Far East. On the same occasion the Church of the Augustinians of Cebu which has become a center of Santo Nino devotion was declared Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu.
On December 5-8, 1967 Archbishop Rosales presided over the First Provincial Council of the Ecclesiastical Province of Cebu. The Council was composed of Bishop Epifanio Surban of Dumaguete, Msgr. Angel Hobayan then Vicar Capitular of Borongan, Bishop Manuel Salvador who acted as Secretary General, the ate Bishop Manuel Mascarinas of Tagbilaran, the late Bishop Cipriano Urgel of l and the late Bishop Teotimo Pacis of Palo. The purpose of the Council Calby°taocgonform the diocesan statutes and customs with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council which he and the other bishops attended.
On March 28, 1969 the Apostolic Nuncio Carmine Rocco announced to Archbishop Rosales that Pope Paul VI had chosen him Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Everybody expected it except the person concerned. In his radio message to the Cebuanos the overwhelmed Cardinal-elect said: “My beloved Cebuanos:. . . whatever I might have done to merit this promotion, I could never have done so without you …” A master planner and architect of many celebrations and projects, he was also given by his brothers in the episcopacy the well-deserved privilege and position of service in their circle as twice President of Catholic Welfare Organization (1953-1958) and once President of Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (1973). He consecrated ten bishops and ordained almost 200 priests. In the sunset of his ministry he participated in the conclaves which elected Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II, both occurring in 1978, the latter coming to Cebu in his Historic Pastoral Visit to the Philippines in February 1981.
He had hardly enjoyed his retirement which started on September 18, 1982 (his birthday) when in October of that year it was confirmed that he was suffering from cancer of the liver. Before Holy Week of 1983 his Coadjutor, Archbishop Ricardo Vidal rushed him to Cebu Doctors Hospital. From then on it would be a painful but resigned preparation for death. His beloved priests took turns in celebrating Mass with him in his hospital room. When he was already too weak even to hold his prayer book, he would call on his Auxiliary, Bishop Angel Lagdameo in the afternoons to pray with him the Evening Prayers in Latin. A few days before he lost his speech, he had the last occasion to tell the Clergy of Cebu through the priests of the Vicariate of Santo Nino led by Msgr. Lagdameo, the last group of priests to visit and bless him, the message of a suffering dying Christian: “Tell them to love their suffering as I do mine.”
Amidst the prayers and controlled tears of the priests and relatives who surrounded his bed, the Prince of the Church returned his earthly life to his Creator. With his death occurring at ten minutes after four in the morning of June 2, 1983 Cardinal Rosales marked exactly the 54th year of his priesthood. Tu es Sacerdos in Aeternum. He was clothed in the red vestments which he himself previously prepared. The seminarians of San Carlos sang the songs which he himself had chosen for the funeral. Cardinal Sin, and the successor Archbishop Vidal together with some twenty bishops and 200 priests brought Julio Cardinal Rosales to his resting place in the Mausoleum which he himself had blessed upon his retirement. There, together with the remains of Bishop Gorordo and Archbishop Lino Gonzaga, he awaits the call of the Resurrection.
Jaime Cardinal Sin in his homily at the funeral Mass for the deceased on June 6 described the multi-faceted personality of Cardinal Rosales: “To his parishioners who marvelled at his homiletic eloquence and inspired oratory, he was a man with the silver tongue. To the poor and the needy, whose lives he made brighter by his generous benefaction, he was a man with the goldensheart. To the aesthetes among us, who saw in his soulful piano-playing the unmistable stamp of an artist, he was a man of deep sensitivity and feeling. To the cosmopolites who saw him walking in the most elite of circles with supreme aplomb and poise, he was to the manner born, a man who was destined for greatness.”