Father Isaiah speaks softly, his crossed hands resting on the table, his eyes gazing at the embroidered birds and horses on the white cotton tablecloth which brightens up the room in his residence in the monastery of Nikozi.

“My mother used to embroider curtains, tablecloths and napkins with swallows, birds and flowers,” recalls the 57-year-old Metropolitan of Nikozi and Tskhinvali.

Father Isaiah’s visits to Nikozi, a village in central Georgia which is part of his parish, are increasingly rare. The parish is split in two by the administrative border with the country’s contested region of South Ossetia. Father Isaiah, whose rank roughly equates to a bishop, usually lives on the other side of the divide, in the monastery of Largvisi in the South-Ossetian-controlled area of Akhalgori.

Traveling the 92 kilometers from there to Nikozi is getting harder by the day.

Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia forced thousands of ethnic Georgians to flee South Ossetia; over a third were from Father Isaiah’s district of Akhalgori, according to Amnesty International. For those who remain in Akhalgori, freedom of movement to Georgian-controlled villages is restricted and depends on the discretion of the de facto South Ossetian authorities.

“You need a pass to cross the administrative borderline, which is issued by the Tskhinvali administration. It lasts either three or six months,” explains the Metropolitan.

A Russian checkpoint sits 500 meters from the end of Nikozi and Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s main town, is easily visible from the roof of the monastery’s episcopal residency. But the proximity facilitates little.

“Sometimes it can take months for a new pass to be approved,” Father Isaiah adds.

For two years and seven months, Father Isaiah couldn’t leave Akhalgori because he didn’t have the pass. The last time Tskhinvali granted him permission to cross into Georgian-controlled territory was mid-2015. This is not exactly the pastoral mission of which Father Isaiah dreamed as a novice priest, but, somehow, his life in the Georgian Orthodox Church has always been connected with conflict.