sentences:  The Russian Empire, which had controlled Georgia since the beginning of that century, made use of that rite exclusive to the Eastern Orthodox Church.Accordingly, some of these Catholic Georgians, clergy as well as laity, adopted the Armenian Rite and joined the Armenian Catholic diocese of Artvin, which had been set up in Russian Transcaucasia in 1850.Only after the granting of religious freedom in Russia in 1905 did some Catholics in Georgia eventually adopt the Byzantine rite.