As an ordained minister in the Light of Christ Community Church, Finbarr Ross celebrated an Easter service for fellow prisoners in the County Jail in Muskogee where he has been held since his arrest by FBI agents on March 4th.

Of the 22 prisoners in his cell block, 10 showed up for the service, including the chief of an Indian tribe. For communion breads they used potato chips and the soft drink, Cool-Aid, for wine.

The past six weeks in the over-crowded jail have been hell for the Cork-born former financier whose extradition to Northern Ireland is being sought by the RUC to face 41 charges of fraud arising out of the collapse of his company, International Investments Ltd, in 1984. On Tuesday he was devastated to learn that the US district court has ordered that the extradition should go ahead.

His arrest in the mountain-top Sparrow Hawk community was a brutal shock for Mr Ross (52) who believed his past of failed companies and ruined investors had been erased. He was looking forward to a "a new adventure, a healing ministry of lectures, healing services and workshops on my practice of Mary Network Healing".

This is what he wrote in his farewell editorial last month in the church, newsletter, Spar- row Hawk Villager. He would call upon "the divine feminine healing energies" so that "we do not carry harmful memories from the past".

Soon after he wrote those words, such memories revived in the form of two FBI agents with a warrant for his arrest. They appeared in the office of Rev Carol Parrish who founded the church and ordained Mr Ross last November after he completed four years training in the nearby seminary. She called Mr Ross to her office.

Shaken, he could only say "Carol, I thought this was settled a long time ago. I had no idea. I just thought it was over."

Then he was handcuffed, not given time even to go back to his office for his jacket and driven down the mountain roads to jail and a white prison jump suit. "I was totally blown away," he told me later in the first of two phone calls from the jail, the first interviews he gave to a journalist since his arrest.

If he was shocked, so were his fellow ministers and the members of the church for whom he had become an indispensable figure over the four years he has been managing the church's financial affairs.

Carol Parrish had known very little of Mr Ross's past life. "We knew he was from Ireland and that he had been in business in Texas but we really did not have a take on what his life had been like before," she said in an interview in her office.

Soon she was to know a lot more as news of Mr Ross's arrest and membership of the church became known. She was sent copies of the book Gibgate in which Irish private investigator, Mr Billy Flynn, gives a detailed account of the collapse of International Investments Ltd and portrays Mr Ross as a swindler. Mr Flynn claims he persuaded people to invest their life savings in a company which was badly managed and collapsed with debts of £7 million.

Carol Parrish says she has had phone calls from representatives of investors telling about the "devastation" Mr Ross's failed company caused.

She is bewildered by the contrast between the Finbarr Ross she has known "a very devout man who says his rosary every day of his life" and the cold-blooded swindler portrayed in Gibgate.

"It's like two sides of a coin. Jet-setter, wasting money, flashy, taking advantage of other people all these awful, painful things that are being said about him. And here's a man we know as generous, sensitive, prayerful, thoughtful, kind to people," she says of the man she ordained a minister last November.

Unlike Matthew and Julie Tierney, two friends of Mr Ross who have been raising money to pay for defence lawyers and who dismiss the "conman" portrayal in Gibgate, Carol Parrish believes there could have once been a "selfish" Finbarr Ross.

On her regular visits to him in jail as his religious minister, she found "a terrible sadness" in him. "Maybe sometimes when we've put something behind us, we haven't faced all of it. Maybe we're in denial."

She says this traumatic experience could be "like a spectre raised up in front of him to be dealt with before he could go any further on his journey. The new person he is, as we know him to be, was forced to look at this again, and I think that's his sadness".

But for Finbarr Ross, there are no guilty feelings to expiate. "I didn't take money and I don't have the money. I was not the beneficial owner when International Investments went into liquidation. The charges are not true. I was not involved at the very end when it crashed. I was totally out and not part of the proceedings."

Mr Ross said that when Declan Collins, a lawyer representing the Gibraltar liquidator, James Galliano, visited him in Houston, Texas, they reached an agreement in which he handed over assets he was managing including his house in Shinrone, Co Offaly. "Declan Collins shook hands and took the agreement back to be signed by Galliano but he never signed it. I heard nothing back and thought everything was OK."

Mr Ross was not to find success in Texas. His investments including the Houston restaurant, Rosie O'Grady's all failed. But this was a time when much of Texas was hit by recession. He says that for six months he and his son were destitute in Dallas and were given refuge in a church there. Through a professor at the A & M University in Texas, Mr Ross heard about the Light of Christ Community Church based in Sparrow Hawk and went there.

Sparrow Hawk is on top of a small mountain in the Ozarks range in the north-east corner of Oklahoma. The town of Tahlequah at the bottom of the mountain has passed into American history as the last stage in the notorious Trail of Tears which was traversed by the Cherokee tribe driven from the eastern states at the cost of thousands of lives.

It was the end of Finbarr Ross's personal Trail of Tears also. After his financial catastrophes, he became a well-loved figure at Sparrow Hawk where be combined his studies in the church seminary with work as chief executive officer of the business side. He raised funds, sold building lots to church members who wanted to settle there, got the potholes in the mountain road filled in, did the daily run down to Tahlequah for supplies and dealt with the printer.

While he did not speak of his past to his new colleagues, he made no attempt to hide his identity and his picture accompanied his signed editorials in the church newsletter which is distributed six times a year to more than 8,000 members in the US as well as in some countries in Europe. In spite of this, the court has ruled that he has been "a fugitive fleeing from justice" since he moved permanently to the US in October 1983.

His new vocation came to a joyful climax with his ordination as a minister of the church last November by Rev Carol Parrish. The Tierneys, who befriended Mr Ross Matthew is from Co Limerick have a photograph of Mr Ross on his ordination day with head bowed and visibly at peace with himself.

The Tierneys met Ross at Sparrow Hawk soon after he came there and got to know him well. They were to prove their friendship when Mr Ross was arrested and they took over the raising of funds to pay his lawyers including an expert on extradition law.

They believe in his innocence totally. Matthew Tierney, a computer systems analyst, and Julie his accountant wife have given generously of time and money to his cause. They take turns visiting him, pay for his collect calls from the prison and look after his battered Nissan for which he had just finished paying.

If the extradition attempt had been rejected, Mr Ross wanted to go back to his ministry in the Light of Christ Community Church but Carol Parrish said that she would first "have to talk about what is in his heart". She said: "If he is bitter and angry, he does not belong in the ministry. . . you don't have to be perfect but you cannot be a person inspiring love if you're angry and hostile and judgmental".

Following this week's decision, it may be a long time before Finbarr Ross is free to minister to anyone. Carol Parrish believes that he will try to carry on his work of healing in prison.