28. According to his son Tiberio Arnoldo Romero, in a December 2, 1998, interview with the author, in San Miguel.
29. Part of a remembrance found among Romero’s papers after his death. From Brockman, A Life, 36.
30. After their father’s death, two of Oscar’s brothers earned money for the household by transporting firewood, coffee, and other agricultural products in an ox-drawn cart, according to Gaspar.
31. Matt 9:37 NIV
32. They left from Puerto Cutuco, on the Pacific. The ship was the Orazio, powered by two diesel engines. During a later trip, in January 1940, an explosion in the engine room set fire to the Orazio during a Mediterranean storm. The ship was carrying 218 crew and 431 passengers, many of them Jews escaping the Holocaust. About six hundred survivors were rescued from lifeboats, many badly burned.
33. The Venezuelan port of La Guaira.
34. His full name was Alfonso Alfonzo Vaz.
35. Monseñor Alfonso Alfonzo Vaz, in a February 18, 2000, phone conversation with the author, said that even some sixty-five years after the voyage, he hadn’t forgotten his first Italian words, among them apple and butter, which Oscar had taught him, nor Oscar’s kind befriending of him in his homesickness.
36. From photo in Jiménez and Navarrete, Reseña, 10. The nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador to El Salvador, was returning home after his term of service.
37. The Colegio Pío Latino Americano was located on the road named Via Gioacchino Belli, next to the Tiber River and close to the Vatican. The colegio moved to a new location in 1962, and the building on Via Gioacchino Belli was eventually demolished.
38. Information from Father Alfonso Castro, a Mexican seminarian one year behind Oscar, in November 16, 1999, phone interview with the author.
39. The Italian word camerata can mean comrade, companion, or dorm. Its plural form is camerate. In this context, the Jesuits seemed to have used the word in the sense of team.
40. These are two of Romero’s two hundred fifty notecards, handwritten during his seminary days in Rome, shared in Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 8.
41. Monseñor Alfonso Alfonzo Vaz, in February 18, 2000, phone interview with author, and in Brockman, A Life, 34.
42. Father Alfonso Castro, of Mexico City, a seminary contemporary of Oscar, commented in a November 16, 1999, phone interview with the author: “Oscar was very shy, introspective. He didn’t speak much and had few friendships.” Another co-seminarian, however, viewed Oscar as quiet but not a loner. “He was not a leader but he was cheerful and very well-integrated into the student body,” said Father Rafael Montejano in a November 22, 1999, phone interview with the author. In adulthood, Montejano became a recognized historian of his native state of San Luis Potosí, Mexico.
43. Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 8.
44. Father Alfonso Castro, November 16, 1999, phone interview with author.
45. In September 1943, Italy switched sides to back the Allied Powers against Germany.
46. Father Bernardo Amaya, December 4, 1998, interview with author.
47. The war delayed or halted usual international mail delivery for several reasons, including suspensions in service between enemy countries, rapidly changing political boundaries due to conquest and occupation, altered or no longer usable travel routes, and mail censorship by one country against another.
48. Father Manuel Porta from 1937 to 1940, followed by Father Darío Ferioli until 1945.
49. According to Fathers Alfonso Castro and Rafael Montejano, who were seminarians at the time. (In separate 1999 phone interviews with author.)
50. A quote from Montejano, ibid.
51. Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 8.
52. Ibid. English translations of notecards from Carlos Colorado, “Fire Brand,” September 11, 2010, http://polycarpi.blogspot.com/2010/09/fire-brand-on-may-24-1941-young-oscar.html.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Of the Allied Powers, primarily Great Britain and the United States flew these sorties.
56. Father Alfonso Castro, in 1999 phone interview with author.
57. Equivalent to a master’s degree.
58. Brockman, A Life, 38.
59. Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 7.
60. An English version of Puente’s biography of Alvarez can be found at https://ia600300.us.archive.org/9/items/lifeoffatherbalt01puen/lifeoffatherbalt01puen.pdf.
61. Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 9. Among other things,Teresa of Avila is known for her prayers that put her in such deep communion with God that her body often levitated.
62. Ibid., 10.