"In addition, the Church gladly sets a high value on the contributions which other Christian churches and ecclesial communities have made and are making, in a united effort, toward the fulfilment of the same task" (loc. cit.). Leo XIII never said that. Nor did he rise to the humility of the further statement: "At the same time, [the Church] holds firmly that she can be assisted to a great extent and in a variety of ways by the world itself, by individual men and by human society, through their endowments and efforts, in preparing the way for the gospel" (loc. cit.). Continuity, however, is here visible. Leo XIII took the first decisive step toward healing the breach between the Church and the European world of his day, which had been his unhappy legacy from the pontificate of Pius IX. He offered to this limited "world" the assistance of the Church for the healing of the ills of the time. Vatican II took a much longer step in the same direction. It repeated Leo's offer?on a more generous scale?and thus reaffirmed an ancient tradition. It also did something new. In its turn it asked the world?conceived in all its global sweep and growing complexity?for its own assistance, not merely for the healing of the ills of the times (upon which, in the spirit of John XXIII, the Council did not lengthily dwell), but more importantly for the fulfilment of the signs of the times. The Council repeatedly insisted that the inherent