This issue has been around for a while but wasn't noticable to players
until some post-3.6.0 tweaking of end of game disclosure. When testing
the DUMPLOG artifact_score fix, I level teleported to the Astral Plane
and performed a cheat ascension. Final disclosure listed high priests
as extinct. Same thing would happen after visiting Moloch's Sanctum
instead. (The latter didn't interfere with creating the Astral high
priests if you got that far, just as creation of the first one there
didn't prevent the other two.)
I forget why high priests are flagged as unique (something I think
I'm responisble for...), but they shouldn't share unique's setting of
extinct during monster creation. (They could be set that way after 4
are created, but this fix doesn't do that. It just treats them like
ordinary monsters so you'd need 127 or 255 or some such to make them
become extinct. Unlike other creatures with a special creation limit,
high priests can be produced when aligned priests gain experience--an
event that I don't recall ever noticing happen.)