Most Reverend Ronald M. Gilmore, Bishop of Dodge City, was unanimously elected President of National Catholic Rural Life Conference during a meeting of the NCRLC Board of Directors on June 4, 2005.

Prior to his service on the NCRLC board, Bishop Gilmore was a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Agricultural Issues while it formulated the statement For I was hungry and you gave me food' (Mt. 25:35): Catholic Reflections on Food, Farmers, and Farmworkers. As chairman of the committee in 2003, Gilmore released the statement saying:

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"For too many in our Church and nation, agriculture is a distant reality, little seen and less understood. (We should) examine agricultural issues in the light of Catholic social teaching, encouraging Catholics to seek the ‘common good' on issues of food and agriculture and affirming the dignity and rights of farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers, both here and around the world."

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Bishop Gilmore said he hopes to help U.S. Catholics "connect their faith to the ethical and human dimensions of food and agriculture issues."

Bishop Gilmore was ordained to the priesthood in 1969 after receiving degrees in philosophy and theology at the University of Ottawa, including a subsequent Doctor of Divinity in 1973. A native Kansan, he was assigned to several parishes, schools, and the chancery in the Diocese of Wichita. He was elevated to the rank of monsignor in 1998 and later that year ordained and installed as the fifth Bishop of Dodge City.

For his motto as bishop, he selected a phrase from the 46th Psalm. The Psalm tells the people to "'be still and know' that I am God, exalted among the nations, exalted over the earth." In using this phrase Bishop Gilmore expresses his deep belief that for all Christians it is necessary to stop and put the aspects of our humanity aside, to praise God and to realize that He is God and that we respect Him for everything that we are and everything that we do comes from Him who is to be exalted over all the earth.