Former SSPX Catholic seminarian arrested, amid allegations he molested students

Sloniker became a truck driver after working as a counselor at Immaculate Conception Church in Post Falls, Idaho, which is part of the Society of Saint Pius X, and studying to become a church priest. Church officials have refused comment on the criminal case.

The ultra-conservative Latin-rite sect has a theology rife with anti-Semitism. It was formed in a 1970 breakaway from the Roman Catholic Church over reforms instituted when the Second Vatican Council condemned “all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews.” SSPX leaders contend the reforms were the result of a “Masonic plot backed by the Jews.”

Investigators, who are tracking Sloniker’s activities over the past decade, say he attended the society’s St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minn., apparently intending to become a SSPX priest. But he was kicked out of the seminary in 2005 for being “mentally unstable” after he tried to circumcise himself, court documents say.

One of the suspect’s alleged victims, police say, was an 11-year-old boy who claims he was raped and sexually assaulted over the past six years.