Notes from today:
Allen reports on the opening meeting this morning:

The business meeting is a closed-door affair, although a handful of members of the press were allowed in at the beginning to observe the opening prayer.
Outside the Synod Hall, reporters watched the various cardinals and cardinals-to-be arrive. When Archbishop John Foley arrived, the former President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and a figure well known to the world’s media, the press gallery broke into spontaneous applause. Foley was one of the few prelates to actually walk over to the press and offer a few words, referring to himself jokingly as “Il Cardinale dei Media.”
One reporter noted that Foley was still clad in his archbishop’s purple, leading him to explain that he won’t be a cardinal until tomorrow’s ceremony.
“The red goes on tomorrow,” he said.
Foley has been under the weather in recent days; he begged out of the Thanksgiving Mass at Santa Susanna, the American parish in Rome, on Thursday in order to save his strength for this weekend’s festivities. He told reporters this morning that he still isn’t feeling 100 percent, but is determined to make it through the next three days.

Zadok has a post on John Henry Newman’s reception of the Bigletto notifying him of his elevation, and his famous speech on the occasion
(To be updated as the day goes on)
(Image source)