How delightful! I had been dancing around the getclobval method but could not make it work with the stored procedure. Syntax is always in the way! Thank you very much! I would gladly become your Kappiya if you would have me.
On another note for any on lookers, and I hope I have this right, if v_xml is null, getclobval chokes. I ended up wrapping the getclobval line with an if statement:
if v_xml is not null then
:out := xmltype.getclobval(v_xml);
end if;