In case people were interested in newer developments on this topic, Perry kindly posted an issue on Jira: https://issues.apache.org/struts/browse/WW-2781
He also came up with a workaround: changing the DTD reference in struts.xml from <!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration//EN" "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd"> to <!DOCTYPE struts SYSTEM "struts-2.0.dtd"> and putting the struts-2.0.dtd into the local class path.