A SURVIVOR who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the Illinois Catholic Church has spoken out about coming forward as a victim almost 50 years after he was molested by a priest.

Dan Ronan, now an Emmy award-winning journalist, was just an 11-year-old alter boy in the fall of 1971 when Father Thomas Gannon abused him after an evening mass at Saint Jerome Roman Catholic Church in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.

The church was down an altar boy that night, so Ronan had a hard time trying to do the job of two people.

As Ronan was in the church’s sacristy, a preparation room, getting ready to go home Gannon, who was in his mid-late 30s, came in.

“I could see immediately that he was in an angry mood,” Ronan exclusively told The U.S. Sun.

“He was probably six-foot-one and 240. He was a big boy. Big man…