Priest: Obama voters should go to confession

? Father Joseph Illo, pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Modesto, Calif., has told parishioners in a homily and in a follow-up letter that if they voted for Barack Obama, they should consider going to confession because of the president-elect’s pro-abortion position.

“If you are one of the 54 percent of Catholics who voted for a pro-abortion candidate, you were clear on his position and you knew the gravity of the question, I urge you to go to confession before receiving communion. Don’t risk losing your state of grace by receiving sacrilegiously,” Illo wrote in a letter dated Nov. 21.

The letter was sent to more than 15,000 members of the St. Joseph’s parish. It is one of 34 parishes in the Stockton Diocese, which has more than 200,000 members in Stanislaus, San Joaquin and four other counties in California.