Word: fraying
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...This World. For his half-hour programs of folk song and plain song, interspersed with religious talks, Argentina's Radio Belgrano paid Fray José a record 60,000 pesos ($6,750) for eight broadcasts. But the money no longer went for the upkeep of lavish homes in California and Mexico. Fray José, bound by a vow of poverty, had turned it over to a Franciscan seminary now abuilding in Arequipa, Peru...
Back to the Old Trade. As a novice in his order, Fray José Francisco de Guadalupe had been startled to learn the extent of the chronic shortage of clergy in Roman Catholic South America; he found that on the continent there were areas half as large as Spain without a priest, some 40,000 parishes without pastors. His decision was to go back as a priest to the crowds and microphones he had given up. Since then he has carried his recruiting and fund-raising campaign into Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and Argentina...
Before the summer was out, Fray Marcos' barber had peddled the news as far east as Cuba. The viceroy at Mexico City was quick to act. He decided to send an expedition up the Pacific coast to take possession of Cibola and its neighboring kingdoms. To head the expedition the viceroy chose 30-year-old Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, who helped finance it with a million dollars of his wife's fortune...
...made up of more than 300 soldiers, "several hundred Indians who went as servants, hostlers or herdsmen," more than a thousand horses and mules, and a flock of sheep. On Feb. 22, 1540, Coronado's cumbersome, armor-clad host headed northward up the western coast of Mexico, with Fray Marcos in the vanguard...
Friar's Secret. Before they had gone far, Coronado's men began to distrust everything Fray Marcos had told them. Instead of the one "small hill" that he had reported between them and Cibola, they found almost impassable mountains. Machetes had to be used to hack a way along roads he had called "good." But Marcos remained cheerful. What seemed like outrageous hardship to the tenderfoot caballeros was easy going for the hardy friar, veteran of long treks through Peru and Central America. Besides, he had his secret. The royal road to riches he had talked about back...