Cannot add error pages for http status code: WebXmlHandler does not support error codes

Issue

WebXmlHandler cannot parse web.xml files containing elements with an element.

We have a custom portal which includes PortletBridge based portlets. We also added an error-page tag to our web.xml:

         <error-page>              
                 <error-code>404</error-code>
                 <location>/WEB-INF/pages/error/error.jsp</location>
         </error-page>

and put the JSP file under the specified path.

But when we try to access our custom portal, we run into the following exception, and our portlets are not displayed:

Caused by: java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: 0
       at java.lang.String.charAt(String.java:658) [rt.jar:1.7.0_72]
       at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClassUnchecked(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:436) [jboss-modules.jar:1.2.2.Final-redhat-1]
       at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClassChecked(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:432) [jboss-modules.jar:1.2.2.Final-redhat-1]
       at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClass(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:374) [jboss-modules.jar:1.2.2.Final-redhat-1]
       at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.loadClass(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:119) [jboss-modules.jar:1.2.2.Final-redhat-1]
       at org.jboss.portletbridge.config.WebXmlProcessor.createErrorViews(WebXmlProcessor.java:156) [portletbridge-impl-3.3.1.Final.jar:3.3.1.Final]
       at org.jboss.portletbridge.config.WebXmlProcessor.parse(WebXmlProcessor.java:136) [portletbridge-impl-3.3.1.Final.jar:3.3.1.Final]
       ... 295 more