Disgraced former Conservative Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken has blamed his "defeat, disgrace, bankruptcy, divorce and jail" on his pride.

Mr Aitken, 59, opened his heart to theology students while giving the annual Chaplaincy Lecture, at Oxford Brookes University yesterday.

He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1999 for perjury and perverting the course of justice following the collapse of his libel action against The Guardian newspaper and Granada TV's World in Action.

He was released from London's Belmarsh Prison after serving seven months of his sentence and is currently studying Theology at Oxford University's Wycliffe Hall.

During the talk, entitled In power, in prison, in prayer, Mr Aitken told a 200-strong audience: "I suffered badly in terms of committing the sin of pride. It's very easy to allow pride to disrupt all your values and judgments.

"Pride gets in the way of the Christian journey from a self-centred life to a God-centred life." Mr Aitken, a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, recounted stories of his time among armed robbers and drug dealers in Belmarsh when he said he was known as "the minister geezer" and told how he reached inner peace by recounting psalms while being threatened at night by fellow prisoners and feeling "utterly helpless and utterly vulnerable".

He has written a book about his experiences since his release and is currently writing another.

Mr Aitken said that during his time in Belmarsh he wrote letters for his fellow inmates and even encouraged and helped the prison hold its first baptism for the daughter of an Irish inmate.

The lecture was the second time Mr Aitken has shared his experiences of becoming a born-again Christian with an Oxford audience. On Friday, May 24, he spoke at the opening of The King's Centre, the new £3m base of Oxfordshire Community Churches, in Osney Mead.