VATICAN CITY – A collection of the hundreds of speeches, letters and appeals made by Pope Francis advocating for the acceptance of migrants across the world has been published by the Vatican, Il Messaggero reports.

 The compilation, titled ‘Lights on the road to hope,’ underlines the Church and society’s need to open its doors to migrants. “Human migration, while generating challenges and suffering, enriches our communities, the local Church and societies on every continent,” the pontiff writes in the preface to the book, which was edited by the Vatican Dicastery for human development.

“Even Jesus was a refugee,” Francis adds. “Like human history, the history of salvation has been marked by movements of different kinds – migration, exile, escape, exodus –, all motivated by the hope of a better future elsewhere.”