Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama attends a Long Life Prayer offering ceremony at the Main Tibetan Temple in McLeod Ganj, near Dharamsala on Sept. 10.

The Tibetan government-in-exile is calling upon the federal government to weigh in on a dispute with metaphysical implications: Who gets to pick the reincarnation of spiritual leader the Dalai Lama after he dies?

Penpa Tsering, the leader of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), based in India, is visiting Ottawa this week to ask the Canadian government to side with it over China ’s authoritarian government, which insists it alone has the authority to choose the successor to the current Dalai Lama, who is 90.

“We need support of as many free countries and democratic countries as possible to express their opinion on what religious

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