Sweden's Roman Catholic Church has received reports of two cases of child abuse by its clergy, as the snowballing paedophilia scandal reached the Scandinavian country.

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"The Catholic Church in Sweden on Tuesday received two reports of sexual abuse of minors," the Stockholm Diocese said in a statement.

"Both cases involve events that date far back, and it is the victims themselves who contacted" the diocese, it added.

The cases, the latest in a string of scandals to have emerged across Europe and the United States affecting the Catholic Church in recent months, date as far back as the 1940s.

"Even though the cases (can not be prosecuted because) the statute of limitation has passed, the Church will investigate the cases in dialogue with the victims," the statement said, adding that "none of the (implicated) priests still work in our diocese."

Stockholm Bishop Anders Arborelius, who received the reports, said he was "deeply saddened" by the cases.

"It is important that the victims dare to come forward with their stories and that we once and for all get to the bottom of these horrifying crimes," he said in the statement.

He said he "hoped and prayed that if there are more people who have been victimised by priests in Sweden they will dare contact me so we can find out what has happened, offer compensation to the victims and see to it that the guilty priests, if they are still alive, are punished appropriately for the crimes they have committed."

The Swedish abuse cases are the latest of a series of such incidents, after similar scandals in the churches of Ireland, Austria, the United States and Pope Benedict XVI's native Germany.

The pontiff, 82, has himself faced criticism over claims that, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he headed the Vatican's watchdog for morals and doctrinal issues, and earlier as the archbishop of Munich, he failed to take action against predator priests.