Lord Fraud, the disgraced press baron Conrad Black is seeking solace in God as he awaits sentencing in America for embezzling millions of dollars from his Hollinger media empire.

In this he is following the original “Man in Black” singer Johnny Cash, who after years of substance abuse with speed and alcohol, had a spiritual epiphany in 1968 after a night in Tennessee’s bat infested Nickajack Cave.

Cash rediscovered his Christian faith, taking an “altar call” in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area. Cash chose this church over many larger, celebrity churches in the Nashville area because he said he was just another man there and not a celebrity.

Although Cash carefully cultivated a romantic outlaw image, he never served a prison sentence. Although he landed in jail seven times for misdemeanors, each stay lasted only a single night. He only ever went to Folsom Prison to perform.

Conrad Black’s epiphany is a completely different matter and he will certainly be sentenced to a lot of long and lonely nights in a prison much like Folsom – which he possibly sees as a bat-infested cave.

On bail at his beachside mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, Black has sent a 1,400-word email to journalist Nicholas Stein at Men’s Vogue magazine, the former Telegraph owner says his faith is providing comfort: “It has been helpful … in reading apposite passages from ecclesiastical authors, especially Cardinal Newman, and in conversation with several very knowledgeable clergymen.”

If indeed the peer is passing his evenings sipping good French wine on the terrace of his 21,000 square foot Colonial-style property while reading the works of Cardinal Newman, it would appear that he has made a remarkable pre-gaol conversion to the Roman Catholic faith.

Black, who was brought up a Protestant, but married to a Jew, was previously considered an agnostic. In the email he continues to insist that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice – although for the first time, he appears to acknowledge that he may be destined for prison. He laments that his fall from grace has taken its toll on his social life as invitations become fewer and small talk becomes tricky.

“The subject of these travails becomes an 800-pound gorilla nobody mentions,” writes Black. “We and other polite people don’t want to talk about it, but it is hard to ignore, and some awkwardness results.”

A jury in Chicago’s federal court found Black guilty on three counts of fraud and a single count of obstruction of justice in July – convictions which, legal analysts believe, could consign him to 10 to 15 years in prison when the judge sentences him on November 30.

Black still asserts that he was “wrongly accused and assaulted and defamed” but, displaying a rare chink in his bombastic demeanour, he concedes that his efforts to overturn the verdicts may fail on appeal.

“I still hope for a complete acquittal,” he writes. “And on a worst case, not a severe sentence.”

Black has hired a high-profile defence counsel, Andrew Frey, to lead his appeal. Mr Frey helped the former Credit Suisse banker Frank Quattrone to overturn his conviction for obstructing an investigation into possible kickbacks on flotations.

The peer does own up to one mistake – his decision to surrender his Canadian citizenship in order to accept a peerage in Britain, which offended many Canadians and has disqualified him from serving any sentence under Canada’s lighter penal regime.

“I do regret giving up my Canadian citizenship,” he writes. “But I always said I would take it back.”

And in coverage elsewhere:

According to Andrew Clark in The Guardian : The disgraced press baron Conrad Black is seeking solace in God as he awaits sentencing in America for embezzling millions of dollars from his Hollinger media empire. In a 1,400-word email to a journalist at Men’s Vogue magazine, the former Telegraph owner continues to insist that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice – although for the first time, he appears to acknowledge that he may be destined for prison. On bail at his beachside mansion in Palm Beach, Black says his faith is providing comfort: “It has been helpful … in reading apposite passages from ecclesiastical authors, especially Cardinal Newman, and in conversation with several very knowledgeable clergymen.”

And Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade has of course joined in: Then comes the insight into his current state of mind: “It has been helpful…in reading apposite passages from ecclesiastical authors, especially Cardinal Newman, and in conversation with several very knowledgeable clergymen.” He also admits that his social life is somewhat restricted: “This experience tends to reduce social activity, not so much because of fewer invitations, though there is some of that, but because it has been such an ordeal, anyone would naturally be less sociable.