As Jean Vanier points out, the Second Vatican Council “breathed energy and hope back into the Church”. The closing message of the council in 1965 announced that the “preferred children of the kingdom of God” were “the poor and abandoned … the unknown victims of suffering”. Jesus had come for the vulnerable, the weak and the struggling. It was affirmation of the path already being followed by Jean Vanier, who in 1964 had founded l’Arche, a faith-based community which welcomed people with severe learning difficulties. In his new book, Vanier identifies seven paths that will give contemporary society hope and will render it more hospitable and inclusive.He begins with a call to accept humiliation with humility. Humiliations, such as the humili