Rigali, speaking at a Center City news conference, said the archdiocese would proceed with a multiyear plan to build schools with large campuses in fast-growing parts of Bucks and Montgomery Counties to replace three older schools.

"I am so pleased to make this announcement as we begin Catholic Schools Week," Rigali said. "This investment in the future demonstrates the commitment of the archdiocese to provide the very best Catholic education for generations to come."

Locating the schools in the townships of Upper Providence, Montgomery County, and Hilltown, Bucks County, archdiocesan officials said, would secure Catholic education for the next 50 years.

The announcement came nearly 18 months after Bishop Joseph P. McFadden, who oversees education in the five-county archdiocese, said new schools were being considered.

Enrollment at the archdiocese's 20 high schools has been declining for years, and officials hope the new schools will help reverse that trend. Surveys have shown that new schools would attract Catholic students who live farther away from existing schools in Pottstown, Norristown and Lansdale.

"We believe very strongly that this is where we should be going in terms of the direction of Catholic education," McFadden said. "That is what this is about - the future. Not about holding on by our fingernails."

Richard McCarron, secretary for Catholic education, summed up the results of feasibility studies by saying, "If you build it, they will come."

He added: "If you don't build it, they're not coming."

Plans call for St. Pius X High School in Pottstown and Kennedy-Kenrick Catholic High School in Norristown to be consolidated and moved to a campus on 92 acres near Royersford. The archdiocese hopes to break ground this summer for the 209,000-square-foot building and open it in September 2010.

"We are supposedly going to be the first class that will be graduating from the new school," said Brian Warner, 15, who was among a group of freshmen from St. Pius X who attended the announcement.

"We're excited," he said.

The Hilltown site, in upper Bucks County, will be a new home for Lansdale Catholic High School, in Montgomery County. Archdiocesan officials hope to begin work on that 63-acre parcel in the summer of 2010 and open the school in the fall of 2012.

A similar suburban strategy paid off with the archdiocese's last high school construction project in 1998, when Bishop Shanahan High School was moved from West Chester to a $30 million facility in Downingtown.

"Bishop Shanahan is a great success story for us," McFadden said. "We built the school for 1,200 [students] with the ability to expand. . . . Less than a year and a half later, we had to put the addition on it."

With the Royersford and Hilltown sites, officials said, a Catholic high school should be within a 10-mile radius of every Catholic family in the archdiocese.

The $65 million price tag for each school is the cost including roads, furniture and equipment. The project will be paid for by a combination of tax-exempt bonds, a capital campaign, and proceeds from the sale of the old schools.

Each building will be air-conditioned and have more than 30 wireless classrooms, five science labs, a library and media-resource center, a television studio, art and music rooms, a chapel, a cafeteria, a 1,200-seat auditorium, a 1,000-seat gymnasium, and an auxiliary gym and fitness center. Plans call for each campus to have six athletic fields, an all-weather surface track, and six tennis courts.

Tuition at the schools is likely to be higher than the archdiocese's other high schools, but officials have not projected an amount. Many suburban parents who were surveyed said they would be willing to pay a premium to send their children to Catholic high schools with top-notch facilities. Yearly tuition at archdiocesan high schools will be $4,860 in the fall.

Initially, the archdiocese expects enrollment at the new schools to remain about the same as at the schools they are replacing. St. Pius X has 553 students and Kennedy-Kenrick 588. Lansdale Catholic's enrollment is 821.

But McFadden said the archdiocese was counting on enrollment rising in a few years. Each building will be constructed to accommodate up to 1,200 students. And, following the model at Bishop Shanahan, blueprints will allow for additions to be built so the schools can expand to 1,600 students.

The success at Bishop Shanahan prompted the archdiocese to begin studying residential growth projections in other parts of the Pennsylvania suburbs.

The Archdiocesan Board of Education began talking about the new schools in 2000. A year later, the archdiocese bought property at Rittenhouse and Township Line Roads in Upper Providence and at Limekiln Pike and Rickert Road in Hilltown.

In August 2006, the archdiocese hired consultants to survey suburban Catholic families to find out whether they would send their children to new schools. About half the Catholic families participating in the surveys said they would.

Officials said the project was the largest high school construction effort in the archdiocese since several Catholic high schools were built in the 1950s and 1960s to educate baby-boom children.

Not everyone welcomed yesterday's announcement. Some Kennedy-Kenrick parents said they would not send their children to the new school because it would mean long bus rides along the Route 422 corridor.

And archdiocesan officials acknowledged they would have to win over a contingent of Lansdale Catholic alumni who oppose the move. "We know they are not happy with moving out of Lansdale," McFadden said.

George DiDomizio, executive director of the Friends and Alumni of Lansdale Catholic, challenged the archdiocese's interpretation of survey data and said he feared the projected enrollment growth would not materialize. He said it is risky for the archdiocese to build two high schools.

"Perhaps a more reasonable approach is to see if the Royersford facility can attract enough students to justify its expense first," he said.

Lansdale Catholic students present for yesterday's announcement, though, said they were sorry they would not have a chance to attend the new school.

"My brother, who is in the sixth grade, will be a junior when the new school opens," said Michael Sweriduk, 18, a senior. "So I suppose I'm a little jealous, but I'm very happy for him."

He said he believed Lansdale Catholic's spirit would survive. "I do have a sense of attachment to Lansdale Catholic," he said. "But L.C. is more than just a building. It's the people who make up the community. I think that even though we are changing locations, it will still be the same."