  We report on a deep XMM-Newton EPIC observation of the globular cluster Omega
Cen performed on August 13th, 2001. We have detected 11 and 27 faint X-ray
sources in the core and half mass radii, searching down to a luminosity of 1.3
x 10^{31} erg s^{-1} in the 0.5-5 keV range. Most sources have bolometric X-ray
luminosities between ~ 10^{31}-10^{32} erg s^{-1}. We present the color-color
and hardness-intensity diagrams of the source sample, as well as high-quality
EPIC spectra of the brightest objects of the field; including the two candidate
Cataclysmic Variables (CVs) in the core and the quiescent neutron star low-mass
X-ray binary candidate. The spectra of the latter objects fully support their
previous classification. We show that the bulk of sources are hard and
spectrally similar to CVs. The lack of soft faint sources might be related to
the absence of millisecond pulsars in the cluster. The XMM-Newton observations
reveal the presence of an excess of sources well outside the core of the
cluster where several RS CVn binaries have already been found. We have also
analyzed a publicly available Chandra ACIS-I observation performed on January
24-25th, 2000, to improve the XMM-Newton source positions and to search for
source intensity variations between the two data sets. 63 XMM-Newton sources
have a Chandra counterpart, and 15 sources within the half-mass radius have
shown time variability. Overall, the general properties of the faint X-ray
sources in Omega Cen suggest that they are predominantly CVs and active
binaries (RS CVn or BY Dra).
