There are not saints buried in every Catholic Church, but there are many churches with saints buried there. There is no saint buried at St. Patrick’s Parish Church nor any of the churches in Markham. Now there are saints who are buried in some Catholic Churches here in Canada. St. André Bessette [whom some of you might know as Brother André] is buried at St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal. He was there from the time of his death and was just made a saint less than 3 years ago. So when holy people are made saints we can say they are buried there in churches.
It was also the practice of burying bishops, sometimes priests, popes in crypts in churches, and sometimes they become saints, so here’s another way saints end up in churches.
Finally, there’s also the practice which came in the early Christian Church [first 100-300 years of Christianity] of building churches over holy sites. This is how we have many of the churches in the Holy Land [where Jesus lived] because the early Christians built churches over places where Jesus lived and ministered [Peter's house, in Cana, where Jesus was born, just to name a few]. The Vatican [where the pope lives in Rome] is built over where the early Christians knew St. Peter the Apostle was buried. Thousands of years after he was buried, archaeologists found his tomb, and it was located right under the altar in St. Peter’s. Amazing, huh?
