diff --git a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/xml.py b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/xml.py
index 432abd7cb3..93ab0497f9 100644
--- a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/xml.py
+++ b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/modulestore/xml.py
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ from .exceptions import ItemNotFoundError
 from .inheritance import compute_inherited_metadata
 
 edx_xml_parser = etree.XMLParser(dtd_validation=False, load_dtd=False,
-                                 remove_comments=False, remove_blank_text=True)
+                                 remove_comments=True, remove_blank_text=True)
 
 etree.set_default_parser(edx_xml_parser)
 
diff --git a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/xml_module.py b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/xml_module.py
index a9a7245e4a..5fa9ff3260 100644
--- a/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/xml_module.py
+++ b/common/lib/xmodule/xmodule/xml_module.py
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ log = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
 # assume all XML files are persisted as utf-8.
 edx_xml_parser = etree.XMLParser(dtd_validation=False, load_dtd=False,
-                                 remove_comments=False, remove_blank_text=True,
+                                 remove_comments=True, remove_blank_text=True,
                                  encoding='utf-8')