An Irish Franciscan friar is being posthumously awarded the highest honour the Zimbabwean government can bestow on a foreigner.
The official citation praises the late Fr Paschal Slevin for appointing the first black African headmasters to Catholic schools in the former British colony, against the wishes of Ian Smith and his predominantly white Rhodesian government.
A native of Ballinacargy in Co Westmeath, Fr Slevin, who died last May aged 83, is being honoured by President Robert Mugabe's government for his work for the people of Zimbabwe.
He joins six others in the Royal Order of Munhumutapa, five of them native statesmen who led their African nations and to independence.
A citation penned by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa praises Fr Slevin for his anti-racist initiatives in local Catholic schools in 1966 and 1971.
It also records that he built a secondary school in Wedza and that when the Smith government refused to pay for an extra teacher, Fr Slevin paid from his own salary to fund the post.
He also supported poorer students and helped many school-leavers to train as nurses in Birmingham in England.
The citation adds that the friar supported the liberation of what became Zimbabwe in a 15-year-long guerrilla war by encouraging students to volunteer for military training in neighbouring countries.
In 1977, the Smith regime closed his schools, and expelled Fr Slevin and fellow-Franciscans from Rhodesia.
But the Irishman returned three years later when Zimbabwe won independence.
For the next decade, leading the local branch of the Franciscans, he educated former guerrilla fighters and helped develop the local rural economy in Wedza - building a dam and grain storage silos and establishing a farmers' co-op.
The Franciscan Order in Ireland had to reflect carefully on whether to attend today's award ceremony in the capital, Harare, which will probably be punctuated with praise for President Mugabe, in spite of his ruinous economic policies which at one stage brought about nine-digit inflation.
An order spokesman told RTÉ News that the award is "a historical recognition" of Fr Slevin's work that does not imply that Zimbabwe's Catholic Church endorses the 37-year-long rule of President Mugabe.
He said Franciscans have at times denounced some of his economic policies and that one friar was jailed briefly for reading to a congregation a bishops' pastoral letter critical of the regime.
Two of Fr Slevin's nieces and representatives of the Franciscan order from both Zimbabwe and Ireland will be among those attending the Defence Forces' Day ceremony.
