When the headers are read in and stored in the context.inMessage.Header the value of the header elements contains new line characters. So for the SOAP message: ... <soap:Header> <wsa:Action> http://x.com/TestMethod </wsa:Action> ... The action header contains a new line character at the beginning and end of the string. ie "\n http://x.com/TestMehod\n" In the AddressInHandler.invoke method, the action is looked up to find an operation and it can't match anything because of the new line characters. In this line: AddressingOperationInfo aop = AddressingOperationInfo.getOperationByInAction(service.getServiceInfo(), headers .getAction()); the headers.getAction() returns the action value with new line characters. They need to be stripped off somewhere along the way.