The residence of the Catholicoi was at Bichvinta (now Pitsunda) in Abkhazia (hence, the name of the Catholicate), but was moved to the Gelati Monastery in Imereti in the late 16th century.

[citation needed] In 1917, following the fall of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II with the Communist Revolution, the dioceses became part of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

This move restored the unified and autocephalous Georgian Orthodox Church in 1917 under one Catholicos Patriarch, namely Kyrion II under the title Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia.

[3] The ethnically Abkhaz Vissarion Aplaa was the only remaining priest after the early 1990s war and he became acting head of the Sukhumi-Abkhazian eparchy.

The new priests (archimandrite Dorotheos Dbar, hieromonk Andrew Ampar, hierodeacon David Sarsania) came into conflict with Vissarion, but through the mediation of Russian church officials, the two sides managed to reach a power-sharing agreement in Maikop in 2005.

The agreement did not hold however, when Priest Vissarion refused to share the leadership and continued to sign documents using the old name of the Eparchy.