VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI will make his first official visit to a Muslim country, visiting Turkey in November, the Vatican announced Thursday.

The pope accepted an invitation by the Turkish president to visit the country Nov. 28 to 30 and details of the visit were being worked out, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement.

Confirmation of the trip came days after the killing of an Italian Roman Catholic priest at a church in Turkey's Black Sea Coast. The Vatican newspaper has said that the death of the Rev. Andrea Santoro was part of recent tension in the Muslim world over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Benedict said this week that he hoped "the sacrifice of (Santoro's) life will contribute to the cause of dialogue between religions and peace among peoples."

Vatican Radio on Thursday reported what it said were the contents of a letter Santoro had written to the pope five days before he was killed, in which he invited Benedict to visit his small parish. "A visit by you, even if brief, would be consoling and encouraging" to the faithful, Santoro wrote.

Thousands of people filed by Santoro's coffin Thursday in a church in a Rome parish where he had served for years before being posted in Turkey.

The pope's planned visit to the overwhelmingly Muslim nation coincides with the Christian feast day of St. Andrew on Nov. 30.

St. Andrew was one of the apostles of Christ who traveled across Asia Minor and is considered the father of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Byzantine name for the present city of Istanbul.

Andrew's contemporary, St. Peter, traveled West and founded the church in Rome. The two churches were united until the Great Schism of 1054, precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope.