Milo Yiannopoulos, editor of the far-right digital news media Breitbart announced his resignation Tuesday after being involved in a major controversy over the comments he made on pedophilia.

Yiannopoulos was editor of Breitbart News, which was run by Steve Bannon, current White House chief strategist and one of the closest figures to United States president Donald Trump, both during the election campaign and after he arrived in the White House on Jan. 20.

During his appearance at a press conference in New York, Yiannopoulos announced that he resigned from this digital media, a decision that he assured was his own, and that he would launch his own media website in the next few days, but did not elaborate further.

Breitbart News has "allowed me to carry conservative and libertarian ideas to communities that would otherwise never have heard them (...) I'm grateful for that freedom and for the friendships I forged there," Yiannopoulos said.

The controversy surrounding Yiannopoulos deepened after revelations of videos in which he joked about a sexual encounter he had as a teenager with a Catholic priest, and after he made comments that were interpreted as advocating sexual relationships between adults and minors.

Yiannopoulos, 33 and of British nationality, defended himself on his Facebook account with a message, saying that he did not support pedophilia, which he described as "vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst."

In addition, he said that the videos were selectively edited as part of a "coordinated effort" to discredit him.

On Sunday he said that when he was between 13 and 16 years old, he had been sexually abused by two men. "My own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous," he added.

"But I understand that my usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor might have come across as flippancy, a lack of care for other victims or, worse, 'advocacy'," Yiannopoulos added.

The resignation came one day after the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) withdrew its invitation to Yiannopoulos to participate in their meeting, which will begin on Wednesday and run until Saturday.

In addition to leading Republican leaders, Trump will also join the conference, which will be held at a convention center in Maryland.

On Feb. 1, Yiannopoulos was forced to cancel an event scheduled at the University of California at Berkeley after violent protests erupted on campus aimed at preventing him from speaking at the center.

The next day, Trump posted on his Twitter account, saying that he wondered if that university should continue to receive federal funds after the protests.