{"id":73811,"date":"2014-12-13T06:27:33","date_gmt":"2014-12-13T06:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=73811"},"modified":"2014-12-12T22:29:22","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T22:29:22","slug":"pope-declines-dalai-lama-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=73811","title":{"rendered":"Pope declines Dalai Lama meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"story_continues_1\" class=\"introduction\">Pope Francis will not meet the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama because of the &#8220;delicate situation&#8221; with China, the Vatican says.<\/p>\n<p>The Dalai Lama, who is visiting Rome, had requested a meeting.<\/p>\n<p>A Vatican spokesman said that although the Pope held him &#8220;in very high regard&#8221;, the request had been declined &#8220;for obvious reasons&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Correspondents say the Vatican does not want to jeopardise efforts to improve relations with China.<\/p>\n<p>China describes the Dalai Lama as a separatist and reacts angrily when foreign dignitaries meet him.<\/p>\n<p>The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after Chinese troops crushed an attempted uprising in Tibet.<\/p>\n<p>He now advocates a &#8220;middle way&#8221; with China, seeking autonomy but not independence for Tibet. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Pope Francis obviously holds the Dalai Lama in very high regard but he will not be meeting any of the Nobel laureates,&#8221; a Vatican spokesman said. He added that the Pope would send a video message to the conference.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesman for the Dalai Lama said he was &#8220;disappointed at not being able to call on His Holiness the Pope but he does not want to cause any inconvenience&#8221;.<\/p>\n<div class=\"caption full-width\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/79698000\/jpg\/_79698860_025088418.jpg\" alt=\"The Dalai Lama (file image)\" width=\"624\" height=\"351\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"caption full-width\">The Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989<\/div>\n<div class=\"caption full-width\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"caption full-width\">Source: BBC<\/div>\n<div class=\"caption body-width\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pope Francis will not meet the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama because of the &#8220;delicate situation&#8221; with China, the Vatican says. The Dalai Lama, who is visiting Rome, had requested a meeting. A Vatican spokesman said that although the Pope held him &#8220;in very high regard&#8221;, the request had been declined &#8220;for obvious reasons&#8221;. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":73812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-73811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}