Tomcat hibernate-mapping issue?

Question

i get this in error and cannot start my application server today. i am on tomcat 9 and when i check my portal log i get this error below. i havent chaNGED anthing of late and it was working perfectly fine till now. i am clueless now and have checked all the code but there isn't any that i can find.

DbSessionMgr::createSessionFactory:Initial SessionFactory creation failed.
org.hibernate.InvalidMappingException: Could not parse mapping document from resource com/btn/directoryservices/db/entity/DirectoryServicesMetaKey.hbm.xml

    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.addResource(Configuration.java:602)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.parseMappingElement(Configuration.java:1621)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.parseSessionFactory(Configuration.java:1589)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.doConfigure(Configuration.java:1568)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.doConfigure(Configuration.java:1542)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.configure(Configuration.java:1462)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.configure(Configuration.java:1448)
    at com.corpus.core.db.manager.DbSessionMgr.createSessionFactory(DbSessionMgr.java:14)
    at com.corpus.core.dispatcher.PortalIntializer.init(PortalIntializer.java:40)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterConfig.initFilter(ApplicationFilterConfig.java:279)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterConfig.getFilter(ApplicationFilterConfig.java:260)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterConfig.<init>(ApplicationFilterConfig.java:105)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.filterStart(StandardContext.java:4581)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5223)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:183)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:752)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:728)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:734)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:952)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployWar.run(HostConfig.java:1823)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.InlineExecutorService.execute(InlineExecutorService.java:75)

    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.startInternal(StandardHost.java:872)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:183)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1439)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1429)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:355)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:495)
Caused by: org.hibernate.InvalidMappingException: Could not parse mapping document from input stream
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.addInputStream(Configuration.java:541)
    at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.addResource(Configuration.java:599)
    ... 52 more
Caused by: org.dom4j.DocumentException: Error on line 1 of document http://www.hibernate.org/dtd/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd : The markup declarations contained or pointed to by the document type declaration must be well-formed. Nested exception: The markup declarations contained or pointed to by the document type declaration must be well-formed.