Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell admitted to looking at the images during his mid-teenage years, adding it was not something he was “particularly proud” of.

Addressing other peers in the House of Lords, the senior Anglican said on Tuesday: “When I was about 15, I had a Saturday job in a wood yard. 

“The men who worked there often left their sleazy and – by today’s standards, I suppose – fairly mild magazines lying around.

“When I was alone in the canteen and if I thought nobody could see me, I looked at those magazines.”

Bishop Stephen also said the availability afforded to youngsters of extreme images through technology poses a “huge moral concern”.

He warned “extremely warped and degrading attitudes” can result from the “persistent and pervasive” exposure to pornography.

Bishop Stephen spoke during a debate on a report by the House of Lord’s communication select committee which called for further action on keeping children safe online.

While admitting the digital age does have benefits, he argued a change in the law is required “to lift it from the mire and misery” it was also creating.

Addressing the chamber, he said: “Although we are indeed growing up in the digital age, we lack maturity in the way we are governing and regulating and responding to this development.

“The digital age can be an age of cultural and intellectual and even moral prosperity but enlightened legislation based on sound and child-centred…

The reports also noted that Devin Patrick Kelley was once caught trying to bring guns onto a military base and threatened superior officers there.

Kelley was also named as a suspect in a 2013 sexual assault in New Braunfels, about 35 miles from the scene of Sunday’s church attack in Sutherland Springs.

The records that emerged on Tuesday add up to at least three missed opportunities that might have offered law enforcement a way to stop Kelley from having access to guns long before he slaughtered much of the congregation in the middle of a service.

Authorities said the death toll of 26 included the unborn baby of one of the women killed. Kelley died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was chased by bystanders and crashed his car.

The Air Force confirmed on Tuesday that Kelley had been treated in the facility after he was placed under pretrial confinement stemming from a court-martial on charges that he assaulted his then-wife and hit her child hard enough to fracture the boy’s skull.

Involuntary commitment to a mental institution would have been grounds to deny him a weapon provided that records of his confinement were submitted to the federal database used to conduct background checks on people who try to purchase guns.

Kelley was also caught trying to bring guns onto Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico…