Pope Francis can restrain Robert Mugabe

If anybody can do anything to restrain Robert Mugabe, it is Pope Francis.

That is why we should welcome the unofficial entry of Africa's greatest human rights abuser into Italy this week, to attend the new pope's inauguration. Mugabe is banned from all member countries of the European Union including Italy, but you can't visit the Vatican, where even tyrants are welcome, without treading on Italian soil.

For this reason old Muggers never misses an opportunity to attend a papal function. It's his back-door into a tiny portion of Europe.

He was in Italy for Pope John Paul's funeral in 2005, and again for his beatification in 2011. He is a Catholic and went to a Jesuit mission school, but fortunately no one holds the church accountable for his behaviour.

He ensconced himself in a hotel on the Via Veneta and no doubt wandered down the Spanish Steps, stopping at the Trevia Fountain where he could have thrown in a few old hundred trillion Zim-dollar notes, making a special wish. Perhaps it was to live to 100, thus giving himself 11 more years to finish off Zimbabwe completely.

He might even have got as far as the Colosseum, and pondered the freedom enjoyed by like-minded rulers such as Nero to throw political opponents to the lions. You can't do that in Zimbabwe. Well, not yet, anyway.

Beating them up, imprisoning them and rigging votes will have to do for the time being.

He was accompanied by his bodyguards and his wife Grace, who once again had the opportunity to shop until she dropped. Harare stores have so little in the way of decent fashion these days.

It's all the fault of those British imperialists who handed over power 33 years ago.

Everyone at home must pin their hopes on the president being granted a private audience with Pope Francis. Maybe the pontiff could share something of his own concern for the poor with a ruler who a few years ago bundled thousands of destitute people out of their informal homes which he then bulldozed.

Maybe he could also inculcate in Mugabe a sense of his own humility. Even if he couldn't persuade him to vacate his mansion and travel by bus, he might at least suggest he give up those motorcades that force other traffic off the streets and send pedestrians leaping into roadside ditches.

The president and the pope have one thing in common. They are both opposed to gay marriage. Mugabe goes a little further.

He is opposed to gays, period. In fact he hates them and has made homosexuality a crime. Perhaps they should avoid a discussion on whether paedophilia is a crime or just a disease.

Apart from the pope, Mugabe likes to meet other celebrities on these occasions, to prove he is still a world figure himself. At John Paul's funeral he stunned everyone by shaking hands with Prince Charles. It was just to show no hard feelings. The Brits weren't all bad. And they did leave him with a love of cricket and the habit of conducting conferences over a nice cup of tea.

But that was before Charles's mother, the queen, stripped him of an honorary knighthood, and it's unlikely he shook any British hands this time.

Pope Francis does have the power to confer on him a papal knighthood. Maybe the promise of one would be the only way to make him behave himself when he returned home.