Pope Francis today signed off on Sri Lanka’s first saint, once again bending the Vatican’s rules to bypass the usual requirement that a second miracle be confirmed foreign media reported.

Francis is expected to canonize Blessed Joseph Vaz, a 17th-century missionary, during his January visit to Sri Lanka.

Pope Francis is due to arrive in the island on January 13 and will leave for the Philippines two days later.

Joseph Vaz was born in 1651, in Goa, India. In the 1680s he came to Sri Lanka and worked amid persecution of Catholics by Dutch colonial rulers, who were Calvinists. He is credited with having revived the Catholic faith in the country.

The Vatican said today that Pope Francis approved a decision by the Vatican’s saint-making office to canonize Vaz. Usually, the Vatican must approve one miracle for beatification, and a second one for canonization. The pope usually signs an official decree attesting to the miracles.

But Francis bent the rules in the case of Vaz, using the same process he applied to canonize St. John XXIII without a second miracle attributed to his intercession, reported international media.

Francis has waived such rules on several occasions now, convinced that the faithful need more models of holiness and that saints like Pope John don’t need the technical, time-consuming and costly process of miracle-confirmation to be offered up as saints.

Francis has also promised to give Asia more saints. During his recent visit to South Korea, he promised to speak to “my friend Angelo” — the head of the Vatican’s saint-making office — after a young Cambodian complained her country had no homegrown saints.

Joseph Vaz, when canonized, will be the first saint both Goa and Sri Lanka could claim as theirs.