Cao Dai is organised in a way that surprises visitors, because it borrowed openly from the Catholic Church it grew up alongside.
The clergy runs from student priests through priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals to a Giao Tong, usually translated as pope. That office has stood vacant for most of the religion's history. Authority is divided between three bodies: an executive arm which administers the religion, a legislative arm headed by the Ho Phap which handles spirit communication and religious law, and a supreme spiritual body consisting of God and the saints. Pham Cong Tac, who dominated Cao Dai for decades, held the office of Ho Phap precisely because the papal seat was empty.
Clergy are divided into three branches representing the Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist strands, distinguished by robe colour: red, blue and yellow respectively. Women are ordained and rise through the ranks, but by a ruling attributed to revelation they may not hold the two highest offices. This is an explicit exception in a religion that otherwise teaches the equality of men and women, and adherents defend it on cosmological grounds about the balance of yin and yang rather than on grounds of capability.
The Great Temple at Tay Ninh is the centre of the largest branch. It is roughly ninety metres long and vividly painted, with dragon-wound pillars, a domed sanctuary holding a starred globe carrying the Divine Eye, and separate entrances for men and women. Four services are held there daily, worshippers in white and clergy in the colours of their branch, and visitors are admitted to watch from the upper gallery.