The motion picture “Romero,” the story of...

The motion picture “Romero,” the story of Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero who was slain in 1980 by an assassin in San Salvador, returned Friday to four Los Angeles-area theaters amid new concerns over the fate of church workers in El Salvador.

Six Jesuit priests were murdered Nov. 16 along with their cook and her daughter.

“The continuing tragedy has aroused great interest,” said Paulist Father Ellwood Kieser, producer of the movie that opened last September. “People want to understand what’s going on in that country.”

Kieser said that one of the Jesuits killed, Father Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of Central American University, was one of the sources for the movie’s script.

Romero became archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, nearly a decade after the Roman Catholic Church in that country had shifted its attention from the wealthy and government elites to the poor. “A timid, scholarly kind of guy, Romero was transformed in three years as archbishop from a mouse to a tiger,” Kieser said.

The $3.5-million Paulist Pictures movie, starring actor Raul Julia, opened Sept. 8 and was showing in 14 theaters in the Los Angeles area at one point. So far, the movie has brought in about $1.25 million, Kieser said. The priest, attached to St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Westwood, was the creator and producer for 23 years of the “Insight” dramatic television series.

PEOPLE

Episcopal Bishop Frederick Borsch, in his report this morning to the annual convention of the six-county Los Angeles Diocese, will call for the election next June of a new suffragan, or assistant, bishop. Suffragan Bishop Oliver B. Garver Jr., elected to that post in 1985, has announced plans to retire when he turns 65 in July. Garver also served as interim bishop for the diocese’s 152 congregations after the July, 1986, death of Bishop Robert Rusack and before Borsch’s election in January, 1988. The two-day diocesan convention, which convened Friday at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott, was scheduled to address problems of poverty and homelessness in Southern California and to discuss details of the proposed Diocesan Center at Echo Park in Los Angeles.

DATES

A panel of scientists will discuss “Genesis, Evolution and the Possibilities of Faith” at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Pasadena Jewish Temple. The temple had an earlier forum on the subject Oct. 27, but scheduled a second panel because of high interest in the discussion, a spokesman said. The discussions at the “bagel breakfast” Sunday will begin with short talks from evolutionary biologist Jonathan Baskin of Cal Poly Pomona; Louis Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, and Arthur Lane of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The first pan-Methodist worship service in Los Angeles--featuring representatives of four denominations--will be held Sunday at 5 p.m. at Faith United Methodist Church, according to Pastor M. A. Robinson-Gaither. The Rev. Carolyn Tyler, pastor of Walker Temple in Los Angeles, will give the sermon, and her church’s choir will provide the music for the Advent service at the South-Central Los Angeles church. Walker Temple is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church; other denominations involved are the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. The local group is an outgrowth of the national Commission for Pan-Methodist Cooperation created in 1988.

On the first anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1988, earthquake that shook Soviet Armenia, St. John Armenian Cathedral in Hollywood will conduct Solemn Requiem services Thursday night under the auspices of Archbishop Vatche Hovsepian. Mass will start at 7 p.m., followed by Requiem services at 8:30 p.m. and the 9 p.m. blessing of a monument dedicated to the victims of the quake.

About 400 U.S. and Canadian members of the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism will begin a three-day social justice conference Sunday at Sinai Temple in Westwood. Topics include abortion, drugs, crime, ecology and illiteracy, according to a spokeswoman.