For two years, as Father Stephen Powley made his rounds at Colorado's super-maximum security prison, an inmate merely glared at him with his arms crossed.

Finally, the inmate broke his silence.

"He said, 'Father, do you have anything I can read about your religion?'" said Powley, a retired prison chaplain and executive director of Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry.

Powley asked the inmate why it took so long to speak to him.

"He said he'd been checking me out for two years because time didn't mean anything to him in prison," Powley said. "He said, 'I listened to how you responded to guys screaming and cussing, and every time you responded with love, kindness and a soft answer. You bring guys right back down.'"

Powley is the guest speaker at a prison ministry retreat at St. John the Baptist Antiochian Orthodox Church in Post Falls through Saturday. He was a chaplain at the supermax prison, referred to as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," in Florence, Colo., from 1994 to 2006.

The prison houses high-profile criminals such as Ted "the Unabomber" Kaczynski, Terry Nichols - an accomplice to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing - and Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

Powley, who was a smokejumper for the Forest Service in Grangeville before becoming a chaplain, declined to talk about experiences he had with any specific inmates.

"People can get carried away with a sense of self-importance," he said. "I learned long ago not to give out names."

But Powley said if there was a prisoner at the facility during his ministry there, he contacted them.

"I realized from the beginning - what they needed was for someone to love them unconditionally," Powley said. "I never wanted to know the crime they committed, although sometimes they'd tell me."

Powley delivered newsletters and greeting cards to inmates and spoke with those who were willing to talk. Eventually, some became so comfortable with him that they cut short their cell-to-cell "phone" conversations with other inmates made by placing toilet paper rolls over their shower drains and speaking into them.

Some of the inmates eventually accepted the Orthodox faith and, with the blessing of a bishop, five serving life sentences even became tonsured monks during Powley's ministry and moved to a lower-security prison because their behavior improved.

"The bishop said some of their prayer lives got to where they put his to shame," Powley said.

Powley doesn't take credit for changing inmates' lives.

"I felt like I was fishing," he said of his ministry. "All day long I'd throw out worms and lures and wouldn't catch anything. Then I'd turn around and the boat would be full of fish. The stories are not about me. They're about God reaching out and touching them. It's supernatural."

Joy Corey, an Orthodox chaplain who has had a ministry at the Kootenai County jail for nine years, said she considers Powley a role model.

"Inmates need to be loved - no judging," Corey said. "One of the biggest keys to his success is being so gentle, loving and kind. It has helped set a path in my own ministry."

It has been a rewarding journey for Corey.

"My time is redeemed whenever I bump into a former inmate who stops me to say, 'Thank you, Joy.'"

Powley recalls receiving his wife Ashley's approval to become a prison chaplain in 1984.

"For 30 seconds fear ran through her body, then suddenly peace came over her," he said. "After I had been a chaplain for six months, we sat on the couch and she said, 'I've never seen you more fulfilled than you are now.'"

It's a ministry he provided in prisons until retirement.

"I ended up being a lifer," Powley said with a smile.