Romero’s Apartment
“I interviewed Romero in his simple apartment at the hospital a few weeks before he was killed. Vestments he apparently ironed himself were draped over chairs. Dishes he said he would get around to washing were in the sink. The typewriter he used to compose his often-feisty homilies was surrounded by loose sheets of paper at a small unpainted desk. There was a brightly painted crucifix above the desk, in the definitive style of Salvadoran artist Fernando Llort, a style that features bright enamel vignettes of a happier countryside, gaily painted houses, improbable livestock, crops fantastical yet real. It portrayed a time that hadn’t existed for years, if it ever had, and if it had, wouldn’t soon be possible again. Llort always said he saw hope and incorporated that in his paintings, drawn from the idealism rooted in his earlier studies for the priesthood in Belgium. Nothing in the archbishop’s apartment gave any clue that this was the home of El Salvador’s strongest moral force as the country tumbled toward wider war, a man whose death was short weeks away.”
– Joseph Frazier, El Salvador Could Be Like That