According to the book 'Picture This!: A Guide to over 300 Environmentally, Socially, and Politically Relevant Films and Videos' (1992) by Sky Hiatt, "Romero (1989) was independently produced by Paulist Pictures, the Catholic media branch of the Paulist order. Father Ellwood E. Kieser [Reverend Ellwood Kieser] turned to the order and to various Catholic bishops to raise money for the film when Hollywood studios and all three American television networks turned him down".
Alfonso Cuarón, the Academy Award winning Best Director for the film Gravity (2013), worked as an assistant director on this picture.
General Carlos Humberto Romero, who was the militant dictator of El Salvador between the years 1977 to 1979, and played in the film by Harold Cannon, was unrelated to Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero (Raul Julia), though the two shared the same last name.
The Latin American church trend and religious doctrine that Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero (Raul Julia) was known to be a supporter, believer, promoter and subscriber of was "Liberation Theology". This has been defined in the book 'Liberation Theology: Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America - and Beyond' (1987) by Phillip Berryman as "an interpretation of Christian faith out of the experience of the poor . . . an attempt to read the Bible and key Christian doctrines with the eyes of the poor".
The film was first released about nine years and five months after the murder on 24th March 1980 of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.