The "moving statue" at Ballinspittle, Co Cork, is an unlikely link to a financial scandal involving the loss of more than £7 million (#8.89 million). Visitors to the controversial grotto this week would have encountered Mr Finbarr Ross, the man who faces 39 fraud-related charges arising from the collapse in 1984 of his firm International Investments Ltd (IIL), praying there.

Mr Ross, released on bail last Thursday week, has been a practising minister of the Light of Christ Church, an "esoteric Christian" group based in Oklahoma, since 1994. Since then, he has travelled on religious missions to Russia, Mexico, Guatemala and Cyprus and to cities throughout the US. "It's like the Catholic Church without the dogma."

He was speaking yesterday morning after a Belfast court hearing to set a date for a retrial was adjourned until next Friday. Last month a jury failed to reach a verdict in Mr Ross's first trial - he denied the charges.

Sipping mineral water in a Belfast cafe, Mr Ross said he was unable to discuss the criminal proceedings against him because they were still before the court. But he stated that he was determined to prove his innocence. "I'm going to push this process right to the end. I'm going to clean it up and try to move forward again and show that I'm innocent."

Mr Ross explained the background to his religious conversion in 1990. "It was like taking the Catholic Church and taking to it all the things you wanted explained but the priests couldn't."

Mr Ross claimed to be a "channel" for "Mother Mary". "In 1992 I had a mystical experience with Mother Mary resulting in that she showed me I had a healing technique for healing emotional illnesses that people have . . . It's like I can see them clairvoyantly. I can tell them what I'm seeing and what I'm feeling and I've never known it to be wrong . . . It's all about working with a person's self-esteem."

How was Ballinspittle? "The peace that would come over you - you could definitely feel the vibrations."

After 721 days on remand in prisons in the US and Northern Ireland, Mr Ross said he was only gradually acclimatising to life outside. He said he accepted this would be a slow process, but added that he felt well. "I'm possibly, from a personal health point of view, better than I've ever been in my view, because I've working through all the trauma I've had. I've had the time."

Of the collapse of IIL, Mr Ross said: "I was so traumatised by the whole thing I couldn't see any way out. I didn't know what to do." He had been homeless for a period, along with his eldest son, then aged 16. "I couldn't work during the day and couldn't sleep at night. We were evicted after six months . . . I lost my confidence and my sense of self-worth." Mr Ross subsequently secured a job, working as a researcher and, later, as a property analyst with the US multinational GE Capital. After 1994, he lived on a 440acre plantation in Oklahoma with the Light of Christ group, which he described as an "intentional spiritual community".

He said prayer was crucial to his daily regime in prison. "I'd get up in the morning and have some breakfast and a shower. By 9.30 a.m., I'd be back in my cell. I would do a meditation and prayer work and all that until lunchtime. I would do some reading in the afternoon and go to exercise."

Before yesterday's brief hearing, Mr Ross chatted with a prison officer who passed by outside the courtroom. Even during his trial, when the onetime financier sat in the dock for six weeks, he could be seen talking - and laughing sometimes - with the prison officers to whom he was hand cuffed. "If you treat them with respect, they treat you with respect," Mr Ross said of the staff at Maghaberry Prison, Co Antrim, where he was held until last Thursday week.

Residing at the home of his sister, Ms Catherine Murphy, in Macroom, Co Cork, Mr Ross said he had enjoyed his first week of freedom. He spent the time getting to know his three nieces, speaking to friends in the US by telephone and going for walks. Other matters such as organising a driver's licence were also attended to.

Mr Ross last visited Ireland in 1996, when his mother died. But he had not been to Dublin in more than 15 years. He said he felt the city had changed significantly since then.