On Sunday, May 10, after church mass, a group of young Muslim immigrants interrupted a Catholic procession in honor of the Virgin Mary. They hurled verbal insults, shouts, and threats as the group passed in front of the Islamic Cultural Center in Conselice, a small town in lower Romagna.

Approximately 100 Catholic Christians, including several small children, were preparing to receive their first Holy Communion, when Muslims from the Islamic Center began howling verbal abuses and threats at the passing procession.

According to an eyewitness, “During the slow procession of the sacred image, some kids on the ground floor of the building of the headquarters of the Attadamun Islamic Cultural Center began shouting a kind of chorus like “Get out of here” and “Go away from here.”

The Catholic participants, especially the children, were reportedly stunned and confused; they halted the procession before regrouping and hurrying past the Center.

Muslim attacks on Christians and Christian symbols are on the increase in Italy. Earlier this year, a crucifix was violently destroyed “in close proximity to a populated mosque” and a statue of the Virgin Mary was destroyed and urinated on by a group of North Africans in Italy.

A 55-year-old Coptic Christian man was kidnapped and held for ransom. Although his family eventually paid, and the Muslim abductors took the money, they still killed the hapless Copt.

On April 26 in Sohag, Upper Egypt, Makram Nazir was returning home from his second job in the middle of the night when he was seized. His abductors then called his brother and demanded one million Egyptian pounds (equivalent of $131,000 USD).

Being an impossible amount to raise, the Coptic man’s family negotiated a significantly reduced price by phone with the abductors. The brother went to the local police station, provided them with all the information, including recordings of the phone calls, but, according to Watan News, “no one made a single move or took the matter seriously.”

After paying the ransom, three days passed before Nazir’s family found the Coptic man’s corpse in a canal.

Killing Christian hostages even after loved ones pay their ransom is not uncommon in Egypt. Such was the case, for instance, of 6-year-old Cyril Joseph: on May 2013, it was reported that his “family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body in his sewer system, where the body, swollen and moldy, was exhumed.”

Juliana George, a 16-year-old Christian girl living in Baghdad, was recently released by her kidnappers after a $55,000 ransom was paid.

She was abducted from her home earlier this month. According to her family, a person knocked on the door of their home and when she answered she was sized by four men who forced her into a waiting taxi and sped away.

Her grandfather, Joseph, a priest, chased the taxi on foot and grabbed on to the door, but eventually fell to the side as the vehicle sped away.

Now returned to her family, Juliana’s father, George, said that she has been traumatized by the experience: "I fear for her and my two other daughters," said George in a telephone interview. "There is no reason to believe that we will not be targeted again. I don't see how we can stay in Baghdad after this."