For starters, he celebrated the first-ever airborne papal wedding, marrying two flight attendants at 36,000 feet during a flight on Thursday to this northern Chilean beachside town.
Then, after landing, Francis came to the rescue of a policewoman who was thrown from her rearing horse as his popemobile passed.
In between, he did what he actually came to do: Celebrate Mass for some 50,000 people in a desert-hot field near the town of Iquique.
And, as a final gesture to cap a most remarkable day even by Franciscan standards, the 81-year-old Argentine set off a near-national uproar by accusing victims of Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest of slander.