IT'S Holy Week, and all over the world Catholics will be commemorating the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even on the World Wide Web.

If you think religion has no place in cyberspace, think again. The seat of the Catholic Church itself is on the web at www.vatican.va. In case you were wondering, www.vatican.com is actually a test page for the installation of the Apache web server software on the Red Hat Linux system. That might attract a different kind of fervent believers and holy warriors in the crusade against Microsoft, but that's not the site for the faithful we mean.

The site of the Holy See includes sections on the Pope, the Roman Curia, the Library/Secret Archives and the Vatican Museum. For its News Services, the site even offers online the video broadcasts from the Vatican Television Center or CTV. It's interesting to note that CTV is currently beaming the Angelus directly from the Vatican to American homes on an experimental basis, through a linkup with Intelsat.

Unfortunately, I couldn't access the video clips through RealPlayer due to technical difficulties. You might want to try and catch the webcast of the Pope's Easter Sunday Mass.

Catholic Online at www.catholic.org could actually be described as a (I hate this term) portal for Catholics. COL actually offers web hosting services for Catholic organizations. Meanwhile, the Catholic Online Internet Service www.catholiconline.com by Freedom offers Internet access enhanced by what it claims as the best defense against Internet pornography. It claims to be the only ISP to offer an artificial intelligence-based "true defense" using the SmartBloX filtering software.

As you'll see, COL is massive, but for the Lenten pages go to www.catholic.org/lent/lent.html. Also, for the news item on the Pope's Lenten Message for Jubilee 2000 you could check out the link to http://www.zenit.org/english/archive/0001/ZE000127.html#item1.

This message was delivered by Pope John Paul II in January. You could also conduct a Bible search though the site, and browse the sections on the angels and saints. For webcasts, go to the Catholic Communication Network at www.cathcom.net.

Closer to home, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines is online at www.cbcp.net. This is a sleek-looking site offering news and official documents from the CBCP. Less temporal matters include The Word Today, which is supposed to be an online daily bread for the faithful taken directly from the Scripture.

You could also read a copy of the Sunday Homily. For April 16, the sixth Sunday of Lent, the Sunday Homily by Fr. Lope C. Robredillo was on "Life Through Death," which talked about the death of El Salvador archbishop Oscar Romero. He was brutally murdered on March 24, 1980 while he was celebrating Holy Mass, his death amid the celebration of Christ's resurrection now evoking a powerful symbolic message. You can also check out past Sunday Homilies in the archives.

The site also offers the Lenten Message and "The Relevance of Pedro Calungsod Today," but the pages wouldn't finish downloading. Yes, surfing the Net can still be a penitential act of its own, particularly if you're using dial-up access.

On a more secular note, you could have a Hoppy Easter at www.holidays.net/easter/. This fun-filled site has information on the origins of the Easter celebration, the story behind the Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs, kids' pages and Easter recipes. You could also greet your loved ones by sending virtual Easter cards through this site.

Actually, one of my favorite virtual card sites is Blue Mountain, which offers Easter cards at www.bluemountain.com/eng/easter/. Or, if you're a Globe Handyphone user, you could order a real Easter greeting card via your cell phone by choosing a card number and sending a text message to 2356. For the instructions, check out and the card selection, go to www.gsmpostcard.com. I tried this service back during Valentine's Day and it works, but in case you're wondering if I'm a cheapskate, that wasn't the only gift I gave.

So, if you're one of the myopic people who think that the Net is nothing but porn, maybe now's the time to see the light. Sure, porn's there since freedom of expression is still the foundation of the Net. Like the real world, however, the World Wide Web encompasses all the different facets of human existence.