Tongue meets cheek in interview with UOC-MP rep.

Moscow, September 27 (Interfax) - Spokesman for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Vasily Anisimov has suggested that the patriarch of Constantinople do missionary work in Turkey, where the spiritual center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is located.

"Tell us about how you're Christianizing your native Turkey first, before teaching Ukrainian bishops to bring to faith a people that has come out from under a 70-year atheistic yoke," Anisimov told Interfax-Religion, when asked to comment on a statement by Archbishop Job of Telmis, a representative of the patriarch of Constantinople at the World Council of Churches, who said that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had no right to demand that the Constantinople exarchs tasked with preparing the country for autocephaly leave Ukraine.

"The ghost of Communism once roved through Europe, and now the ghosts of the Byzantine Empire, the current Constantinople bishops, poor things, are looking for someone to care for and milk them," Anisimov said.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church called Constantinople's intention to issue a tomos to Ukraine "intrusive motherhood": the Church of Constantinople "has suddenly remembered that it was a mother 300 years ago," he said.