The Dalai Lama on Friday said he had sent a letter of congratulations to Prince William and Kate Middleton ahead of Britain’s biggest royal wedding for 30 years.
“I already wrote a letter,” he told reporters in Tokyo, where he had offered prayers for Japan in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 25,000 dead or missing and ravaged Japan’s northeastern coastline.
Prince William and Kate Middleton marry Friday in a wedding that will be watched by more than a million spectators in London and two billion global TV viewers. It will be Britain’s biggest party since the late princess Diana married William’s father Prince Charles in 1981.
“I want to express my congratulations,” the Dalai Lama said, wishing the couple a “happy marriage”.
The 75-year-old monk, on his way to the United States, offered prayers and messages to a nation in deep sorrow after the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that has plunged Japan into its worst post-War crisis.
The spiritual leader announced last month that he wanted to shed his role as political chief of the Tibetan government-in-exile but will retain the more significant role of Tibet’s spiritual leader.