Rachel Postovoit cannot hear her church organ, but she can feel the music.

That's because an eight-foot-long acoustic "cannon" at the rear of the sanctuary amplifies vibrations through the wooden floor.

Both the floor and the cannon were designed to accommodate members of Holy Angels Church of the Deaf in Vernon, one of only two Catholic parishes for the hearing-impaired in California.

Every Sunday, more than 300 worshipers pack the small sanctuary for two services, leaving standing room only for latecomers. Many say they flock to the church because it offers a meaningful religious experience that "hearing" parishes are unable to provide.

They note that the parish's two priests, both of whom are deaf, sign services in front of burgundy walls that make hand movements easily visible. And confessions, traditionally heard in anonymity as a priest sits behind a curtain, are conducted in face-to-face sign language in a small room with lights that illuminate the area around the hands.

"At our other church (in West Covina), we missed out and couldn't relate to what the priest was saying," said Postovoit, 19, who attends Sunday services regularly with her deaf twin, Rosemarie. "Here we watch (our pastors') hands. Their hands go to our eyes and our eyes go to our hearts."

The church opened in December, 1988, in a vacant 75-year-old stone chapel amid a largely industrial area of Vernon. The Los Angeles Archdiocese established the parish at 4433 S. Santa Fe Ave. in response to requests by the deaf community, which for 12 years had worshiped alongside hearing parishioners at St. Bernard's Church in Glassell Park. The religious deaf community in Los Angeles has prayed together for at least 65 years, but had long sought a place of its own, said Father Brian Doran, the pastor of Holy Angeles.

While the church has a membership of about 300, as many as 500 people from Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Bernardino counties attend religious and social activities including weddings, baptisms, Mardi Gras nights, luaus and Western barbecues, Doran said. The other California Catholic parish for the deaf is in San Francisco.

The congregation includes hearing members, those who are deaf and those who are hard of hearing, meaning they can communicate to some extent with words.