What's the purpose of offering hearts to the goddess?

In Kid Icarus: Uprising there is the option to offer hearts to the goddess via the vault menu. The description for this option is just:

There's no reward for an offer, but it will bring the goddess closer in spirit!

To say this least, this is a terrible uninformative sentence. What affect does offering hearts to the Goddess have? Exactly what does bring the goddess closer entail?

It really does nothing. Across the Internet, people have donated 999,999 hearts to Palutena and the only thing it verifiably does is make her walk closer.

Here's a list of what I've confirmed it does not do, having donated 60k near the start and nothing since:

• No shop sales. This is the most common rumor - people claiming things in the shop get cheaper. They don't.
• No better shop items. Shop item quality does seem to go up, but it's not connected to donations. My guess is average completion intensity, percentage complete, or maybe just time played.
• No additional dialogue. There's a lot of dialogue in the game, and it varies depending on where you are, your weapon, intensity, and probably just plain randomness.
• No treasure hunt squares. The full treasure hunt list is known (warning: contains lots of plot spoilers) and none of the items involve offering hearts.
• No effect on Idol Toss. Idol Toss chance is entirely proportional to how many idols you have and how many eggs you use.
• No better loot. Weapon / power quality depends on intensity and what you have unlocked in the treasure hunt.
• Fireworks don't do more damage.

Additionally, for those who have beaten the game:

Later in the game, the UI switches to Viridi instead of Palutena. After you beat the game, you can use the Hidden Options to switch between the two. They have different donation pools. Neither does anything.

Okay, I have finally gotten one million hearts, and i will be giving it all ot palutena in 50 thousand increments.

So after giving her 1 million hearts... she is pretty close to the screen. I can only see from the waist up. I checked the prices of the weapons that I can buy and sell, and there is no notable difference. Fusing weapons doesn't add anything new, either.

What I did find, however, is that when I played a chapter, I found a bit of new dialogue between Pit and Palutena. I was playing chapter three, and Pit randomly began to talk about his goldfish. This may or may not be related to the heart offering or the intensity of the level(I was playing it at 8.5).

Also, the amount of hearts I could get in a level did not change. However, when I obtained weapons from chests, they seemed to be better than they usually were, such as more frequent weapons in the 300 value range with good ranged, melee, and attributes. That is about all I can see at the moment. Hope this cleared things up a bit.